Newbie - Having hell coming off the dreaded Cit!

[sarah5string]

Hi all, I'm new and found this forum after being at my wits end with god damn withdrawal symptons. Keep thinking that I'm losing my mind so glad to see it's not just me!
I've been on Citalopram since Nov 2010 after going to my doctor with panic attacks/anxiety/depression. I'm now in counselling/therapy after badgering my doctor for a referral,who in all honesty is useless and has a tendancy to just throw pills at people. There was no real discussion about options and he just put me on this after asking if I was more bothered by the physical or mental symptoms, that's it! I had no idea it would be so hellish when I eventually wanted to come off them.
Anyway, now I'm in therapy I wanted to come off the pills and manage with my anxiety/depression myself with the help of therapy.
God was I in for a shock. I went a week last thursday (26th May) after being on 10mg for about 3 months (was up to 20mg at one point) and my Dr said fine, take one every other day for a week and then stop when you naturally forget to take them. No mention of withdrawal symptoms or anything.
Day or so after my first missed pill is when I started to feel awful. Totally lost interest in anything and felt like a zombie in all honesty! I stopped taking them altogether this week as I found that the day after I'd had a pill I would feel even worse than when I'd skipped one, so I've been going cold turkey for about 5 days now. It's been horrible! I wasn't able to go into work last week at all as I just wanted to hide from the world, and the past week has been just awful and I am totally shocked and annoyed at my doc for not even giving me warning it would be this bad.

So far my wonderful withdrawal symptoms are:

General feeling of 'can't be bothered/simply don't care'
Mood swings with my raging one minute and wanting to cry the next
Wanting to avoid people (Not easy when I work full time and have 2 young daughters)
Horrible, horrible lucid nightmares. So bad that I'm actually really nervous about going to bed at the moment.. Thanks to these I'm sleeping badly.
Dizziness
Weird pressure and 'wooshing' feelings when I move my eyes, really hard to describe that one but it's nasty!
My whole head sometimes feels like I'm inside a tv with white noise on full volume.
General confusion
blurred vision
Can't concentrate or focus on things

and this is only 10 days in!! I broke down in work today and thankfully they've been wonderfully supportive as I work in a industry where or clients often suffer mental health problems so we're all very empathic. But I'm currently feeling like I'm either going insane, especially with the dreams which are horrendous. I was convinced last night that I was going to end up trapped inside my own brain and sectioned! It's so terrifying.

Sorry to rant, I suppose I just needed to get it all off my chest as I don't have anyone else who's been through the same, just people who say 'I came off it a while back and was fine!' Great for you but that doesn't help me!

Thanks for listening to my ramble....

[Ingenious]

Yes doctors are bloody marvellous at doing this, "just stop taking it" and by the way, let's not warn you about the withdrawal symptoms I suppose they don't want to worry you.

I remember when I came off Citalopram I kept getting huge "buzzes" through my head, dizziness, blurred vision, strange vision effects like you describe (almost like motion trails, or slow motion).

I have two friends who have been on and off Citalopram several times with no side effects, I can't understand it.

There's quite a lot of posts about withdrawal symptoms here and no matter how strange you think yours are, someone else will have had it too.

The good news is they do wear off fairly quickly, from memory I had about a week of bad effects then it subsided.

[Jannie2948]

Hi, I'm sorry you are having such troubles with withdrawal. I have been coming off of citalopram gradually for a few months now. I am now down to 10mg from 40mg and 'touch wood' haven't really experienced anything as bad as you have. I have the dizziness and the strange shooting pains in my head, bit of blurred vision but generally I feel much better. I am now down to taking 10mg every other day to see how I go. I must say though that they really helped me at the height of my panic/anxiety, even though I had horrendous side effects when I first went on them, and so I was dreading coming off of them. I do hope that you get through this quickly and come out the other side feeling much better. I wish you all the very best.

Regards
Jannie x x