I was prescribed Sertraline (Zoloft) in 1998 when I had postnatal depression. I was told to take it for a year to 18 months. I went from deep depression/anxiety to euphoria in the space of about two weeks, I felt pretty damned fantastic, there was nothing I couldn’t handle. As time went on I continued to feel well but my emotions were dampened down, so I was functioning well, no depression, but no “joy” either. After a few months of feeling well I decided I didn’t want to be on Sertraline anymore, didn’t read the patient information leaflet or talk to a doctor, not that that would have helped anyway. I just stopped taking them. My head felt terrible, it began to feel water logged, if I turned my head there was a time lag between my eye balls catching up with the fact that my head had turned, so dizzy, gradually intense sadness would kick in, really really intense sadness and anxiety, oh the anxiety, pumping adrenaline and nerves shot to bits. I went back on the Sertraline.
The doctor told me to do the alternate day thing, alternate days for a fortnight,then every third day for a fortnight, then one tablet a week, I did this various times over the next few years to no avail. I tried a pill cutter and halving the tablet, it wouldn’t break down easily without crumbling so that was unsuccessful. Every time I tried something, I ended up in worse shape than the time before, it was all getting steadily worse. I tried meditation, healing, exercise, cognitive behavioural therapy, counselling, fish oil capsules, NOTHING touched it. I pressured my surgery to refer me to a psychiatrist for advice,but the psychiatrist had no clue and could only recommend switching to another drug. I did switch to Citalopram for a while, and Mirtzapine, I felt constant fatigue on Mirtzapine, and then back to Sertraline. Yet another psychiatrist recommended halving my dose of Sertraline and taking diazepam to mitigate the withdrawals, so replace one powerful drug with an even more powerful addictive drug.
This is my description of how withdrawal felt from my blog, I only recently found out that what was happening had a name,akathisia:

“5am and for about the 3rd night in a row I’ve barely slept, I can’t stop the adrenaline pumping round my body, my stomach is tightly knotted, I’ve barely been able to eat properly it makes me feel sick. I’m clammy, sweating and crying and P is trying to reassure me, but he has to go to work. I get up and drag myself through all the motions of the day and making sure boys get to school, I feel like the living dead, I make sure they get fed and make sure they and no one else is aware of what’s going on, I don’t hang around at the school gates. Oh I do kind of tell a few people I’m not really feeling right but I play it down.
The constant adrenaline is tormenting me on the inside and I can’t stop it.It’s been building up over a period of months and I’ve been fighting and fighting the feelings but it seems to have reached a peak of exquisite torture.It’s like being at the top of a roller coaster that never stops. Someone else mentioned birdsong, and it was a funny thing, the torture was worse in the mornings and over the summer months while it was slowly building, birdsong in the morning outside the window had become a kind of torture as well. I had to go to work part time and God only knows how I managed it. I had taken my last Sertraline tablet months ago, and come off it as per the doctors instructions, and now my depression/anxiety was back tenfold to punish me for daring to presume I could stop taking it. I must be wired up wrong, no one else feels like this do they? What is wrong with me? Maybe I really am insane, maybe I just can’t cope with life without my tablets, how come everyone else can cope with life, and I can’t? There must be something fundamentally wrong with me. By now the Orwell Bridge was beginning to look a bit attractive and I just wanted to escape the adrenaline surges torturing me, my nerves were in shreds”.
This was 2003,at the end of 2003 I gave in and went back on the sertraline.

In 2006 I attempted another withdrawal, but at the same time we found ourselves going through a stressful life event, I tried to tough it out but ended up back on the Sertraline again.
So here I was, several years later and no further forward, and not for wont of trying! Everytime I went in a book shop or library I would try and find anything I could about antidepressants and depression, but nothing really enlightened me. I rummaged around on the internet but couldn’t find the answers. Until one day, I was browsing around Waterstones, and “Coming off Antidepressants” by Joseph Glenmullen jumped out at me, (this book is now called "The Antidepressant Solution"). I read it avidly, and discovered TAPERING!!! But, all the examples in the book referred to liquid Seroxat or Prozac, I was really upset to find Sertraline was not available in liquid form. Armed with my new information about the simple concept of tapering, further digging led me to Dr Healy’s protocol of switching to the equivalent dose of liquid Prozac. These two pieces of information became my secret hope, I latched onto them. I decided to take a leap of faith and switch to liquid Prozac. At the beginning of 2007 I marked up my calendar with a schedule, I was going to go down from 5ml to 4.90ml the first week, 4.80ml the next week and so on, as my sons would say “epic fail”. By about mid February the nightmare was unfolding again and I had to give in and go back to the top of my Prozac dose, I was devastated.
Still I hadn’t given up hope, P was sympathetic but he couldn’t understand why I didn’t just give it up and accept I “needed” the drugs like a diabetic needs insulin. After lots more research, and P having interesting and enlightening conversations with a client who was a pharmacist about my problem, I started my taper again in May 2008, this time much much slower and here I am four years later down to 1ml liquid Prozac and still sucessfully tapering. It has needed a lot of self-discipline. I kept this blog/diary of my progress; I’ve been amazed to meet a few others who have been tapering longer than me. Nowadays my withdrawals are fairly benign, but I still feel a bit scarred from the experience,the akathisia has left me still feeling like my nerves are quite raw and very close to the surface but I can live with that now.
There is a huge assumption that these drugs are benign and harmless, they are not; they can cause extreme agitation and internal torture. They are dished out like smarties and people left to deal with the results. Starting them is like playing a game of Russian Roulette, you might be a lucky one who can take them and come off them with ease, or you might not. My understanding was that they were meant to be taken for only a year or so after you feel “well” but many many people are stuck on them for years or forever, I know many people who’ve given up hope of coming off SSRI’s and I hear many people say “oh I’ll be on these the rest of my life”. There is NO support or advice in place through doctors or psychiatrists on how to taper safely off the drugs.....if anyone does find any help in the UK, please let me know, although it’s a bit too late for me now as I’ve almost done it myself, but I know a lot of other people who might like to know!

Sunday 26 February 2012

Numb Documentary - Watched at Last


Numb website - order the documentary here

I watched this last night, that was a big mistake, my sleep pattern has been a bit shot lately and watching this before bed didn't help!

It was absolutely spot on and I related to ALL of it. I've written about what it feels like to stop taking your antidepressant and what happens Akathisia as have many others, but Phil has gone a step further and actually filmed what happened when he halved his antidepressant. There's no way I wanted anyone to see me in that state and I actively hid myself and "it" when the withdrawals kicked in. Big kudos to Phil for doing this.

The excerpt with his very supportive wife was exactly how Peter was with me, especially where she said she didn't want Phil reading the worst case scenarios on the internet, it was obvious to me Phil was reading the Paxil Progress web site, exactly as I had when desperately searching for the answers. The impact on marriage and family life was an exact mirror image of ours when I was trying to stop taking my antidepressant. Peter on the outside trying to understand what was going on but feeling pretty helpless. Phil tried everything I tried, diet, exercise, alternative remedies, all to no avail. In the end he did what I had to done so many times, he restarted the antidepressant, after much angst and wrestling with whether to persevere with his withdrawals or give in and go back to the drug.  I was interested to see he switched to Prozac, just as I did, and I wonder if it was with a view to attempting to taper off liquid Prozac in the future.

Something else jumped out at me, one commentator in the documentary talked about whether these drugs are "addictive" or not, and this is a question that I have wrestled with. The commentator (I can't remember who it was, perhaps someone will remind me) made the point that the drug companies tell you they are not addictive because you don't see people selling them on street corners and people craving them, but that's because it's so easy to get your prescription filled from the doctor. I have sat in the surgery and heard someone begging for a doctors appointment because they hadn't realised they'd run out of their seroxat and if they didn't get it they would be in a terrible state the next day.

If anyone around me wants to borrow it and watch please feel free to ask me, but I won't post it to anyone because I don't want to risk losing it!



Tuesday 14 February 2012

1.20ml - New Reduction

It's been two months since I last reduced, I think I'm deliberately taking it slower over the winter.

I've said it before and I'll say it again but I'm at a stage where it would be so easy to just stop taking the Prozac, I'm on such a stupidly low dose, but on the other hand I'm scared of all my hard work and patience unravelling at the end. So I'm keeping in mind what I read that I shouldn't ever reduce more than 10% of the last dose I was on, and when you think about the maths, the lower I go, the steeper the % drops.
So I'm really not sure how this will work when I hit 1ml, I think I may have to consider when my jumping off point will be.
 NEVER underestimate how this class of drug can screw you up. I'll carry on being the tortoise and not the hare for the time being.

My tortoise Prozac reduction timeline!

Monday 13 February 2012

Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: Why Taper by 10% of your Dosage?

I found this today and thought it was an excellent article, I have also put it as a page on the side for reference. It's more or less the method I've been following. Just been wondering where my "jump off" point will be....

By AltoStrata

AltoStrata's Surviving Antidepressants Web Site


Why taper by 10% of my dosage?

We believe that, for a minority, the risk of severe withdrawal is so great, a very conservative approach to tapering to protect everyone is called for.

Many people seem to be able to taper off psychiatric medications in a couple of weeks or even cold-turkey with minor withdrawal symptoms perhaps for a month or so. Doctors therefore expect everyone can do this. However, it seems a minority suffer severe symptoms for much longer.

It is unknown how large or small this minority is. You may very well be in it. You cannot know how your nervous system will respond to a decrease in medication until you try it.
Withdrawal symptoms represent neurological dysfunction. Severe symptoms can be distressing, debilitating, or even disabling. If you get prolonged withdrawal syndrome, there is no known treatment or cure. You will have to cope with it until it goes away.

Some guides will suggest a trial decrease of 25% to start. If you get withdrawal symptoms, it is recommended to reinstate the original full dosage and taper more slowly from there.

That is reasonable, except that it can take weeks to feel the full brunt of withdrawal symptoms from an initial drop. If you have already made two reductions from your original dosage, you will have reduced by about 50% — and your symptoms may indicate substantial neurological damage.

(NEVER ALTERNATE DOSAGES TO TAPER. IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE, THIS IS SURE TO SET OFF WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS.)

If you are a person who is sensitive to fluctuations in your dosage, you may be suffering quite a bit, and for these people, even if the original dosage is reinstated at this point, withdrawal symptoms may continue to be severe.

To save wear and tear on your nervous system, we recommend an initial drop of 10% and staying at that level for a month to see if withdrawal symptoms develop. If they do, you may wish to reinstate and make smaller decreases at intervals of about a month. If you are sensitive, this can protect you from a great deal of pain and discomfort.

If are not sensitive to a 10% drop, by listening to your body, you may be able to make 10% drops more often than every month.

In this way, the 10% method protects everyone and you have the option of tapering faster if you can tolerate it.

From the Icarus Project Mind UK Document


If you find you have to withdraw very slowly, it can be difficult to make small enough reductions in your dose, especially if your drug comes in capsule form. Sometimes it’s possible to break open the capsule and remove some of the content to lower the dose. You should always take care doing this, though, as the contents (for instance, fluoxetine) are sometimes irritating to the skin or the eyes. A pharmacist should be able to tell you if it’s safe to do so.
Some drugs are obtainable in liquid form, which can be diluted to make small reductions in dosage. It may be worth asking whether you can change to one of these. You would then need to be very sure what the concentration of the liquid is, and how much water to add to achieve the dose you wish. You may want to ask a pharmacist to help you with this….
Allow enough time for your body to readjust to the lower dosage at each stage. You could start by reducing the dose by 10 percent, and see how you feel. If you get withdrawal effects, wait for these to settle before you try the next reduction. Then reduce it by another 10 percent of the original dose. As the dose gets smaller, you may find this rate more difficult to cope with, and reducing by 10 percent of the reduced dose may be a better idea. If you started with 400mg of your drug, for example, you could first reduce the dose by 10 percent (40mg), to 360mg. The next 40mg reduction would take you down to 320mg, then 280mg, 240mg, and so on. If you got to 200mg and then found that a further drop of 40mg drop was too difficult, you could reduce by 10 percent of 200mg (20mg), and go down to 180mg, and so on. At each stage, if you find the reduction too difficult to cope with, you can increase the dose slightly (not necessarily back to the previous dose) and stabilise on that before you continue.

Also see Dr.Peter Breggin's 10% taper method

Please note that the 10% reduction method we recommend is a 10% reduction on the already reduced dose.

- If you started at 10mg, the first reduction would be 10% of 10mg, or 1mg, for a reduced dose of 9mg.

- Your second reduction would be 10% of 9mg, or .9mg, for a reduced dose of 8.1mg.

- Your third reduction would be 10% of 8.1mg, or .81mg, for a reduced dose of 7.29mg.

And so on.

This ensures that your nervous system is eased down a gentle 10% slope at every step of the process. It’s important that drops become smaller, not larger, as you go. Once you find the rate at which you can comfortably taper, you don’t want to jolt your nervous system with a larger drop than it can handle.

Mathematics whizzes may recognize that the 10% reduction formula is a geometric progression approaching but never equaling zero. At a very small dosage, likely less than 1mg, when reductions no longer cause any withdrawal symptoms, you will want to simply stop.

You will need to use your own judgment about your jumping-off point. Some people have found that the final steps require reductions so tiny they cannot measure them, employing methods such as dipping a toothpick in a liquid solution to ease off in the final stages.



Thursday 9 February 2012

A Prozac Withdrawal Story - This is Short..


..but I bet the long term withdrawal isn't. This is less than a minute but puts it in a nutshell, I had forgotten about this video until a friend shared it with me.




And after I posted this the other day, a friend shared with a video he had made about his own experience after cold turkey from 40mg Prozac (which is double the dose I was on) and sadly he is still reaping the whirlwind and now coming off Prozac a lot slower.





Prozac Reduction Timeline

Thursday 2 February 2012

Akathisia - a Side Effect of SSRI's, Withdrawing Too Fast off SSRI's, or Cold Turkeying off SSRI's

Summer 1994

Coming back from a gathering of mums and babies, post natal NCT support group, in reality the group wasn’t very supportive, there was rather a lot of competitive mumdom going on, other babies seemed to be sleeping through contentedly, learning the alphabet, names put down for private school already, ok I’m exaggerating a bit.


The mum I was getting a lift home with, our two babies in their seats in the back, I had more of an affinity with, our babies were not so easy and we didn’t pretend otherwise, and neither of us was finding new motherhood a breeze, and we both had money worries. In hindsight I know I was depressed and living with my emotions very raw and close to the surface but for me this was a very closely guarded secret but I think the other Mum sensed it. She was more open about her feelings, at least to me anyway, on that drive home she suddenly let rip, it all came tumbling out, how depressed she felt, her resentment towards the other Mums in the group, the medication she was on, how life was a constant uphill battle managing the baby, her dog, her husband, anxiety about going back to work and the sleepless nights, and the medication she was on. She told me that she often had thoughts when she was driving of just ramming her car into a lorry or car in front deliberately to escape her life.

December 2003 and Feb 2007

5am and for about the 3rd night in a row I’ve barely slept a wink, I can’t stop the adrenaline pumping round my body, my stomach is tightly knotted, I’ve barely been able to eat properly it makes me feel sick. I’m clammy, sweating and crying and P is trying to reassure me, but he has to go to work. I get up and drag myself through all the motions of the day and making sure boys get to school, I feel like the living dead, I make sure they get fed and make sure they and no one else is aware of what’s going on, I don’t hang around at the school gates. Oh I do kind of tell a few people I’m not really feeling right but I play it down. The constant adrenaline is tormenting me on the inside and I can’t stop it. It’s been building up over a period of months and I’ve been fighting and fighting the feelings but it seems to have reached a peak of exquisite torture. It’s like being at the top of a roller coaster that never stops. Someone else mentioned birdsong, and it was a funny thing, the torture was worse in the mornings and over the summer months while it was slowly building, birdsong in the morning outside the window had become a kind of torture as well. I had to go to work only 2 days a week and God only knows how I managed it. I had taken my last Lustral tablet months ago, and come off it as per the doctors instructions, and now my depression/anxiety was back tenfold to punish me for daring to presume I could stop taking it. I must be wired up totally wrong, no one else feels like this do they? What is wrong with me? Maybe I really am insane, maybe I just can’t cope with life without my tablets, how come everyone else can cope with life, and I can’t? There must be something fundamentally wrong with me. By now the Orwell Bridge was beginning to look a bit attractive and I just wanted to escape the adrenaline surges torturing me, my nerves were in shreds.



Broken, exhausted and shaken I reluctantly started taking the Lustral again and gradually started to feel more “normal”. Obviously there was something wrong with me and I needed Lustral to help me function. How come though I hadn’t needed Lustral to function before 1998?

Nowadays my withdrawals are almost but not quite non existent, the tsunami that is akathisia has long since washed away leaving me just a bit more nervy and more vulnerable to stress, much calmer but aware that adrenaline is always not far from the surface, and still trying to hide it and not always succeeding.

I’ve just finished reading Ann Blake Tracey’s book “Prozac Panacea or Pandora?”, I’ve heard the word akathisia in relation to antidepressants in recent years but I had never been quite sure what it was or that it applied to me. This book included loads and loads of anecdotes from people and information about akathisia and I actually felt emotional reading it, there was a name for it and I never knew at the time and I’m absolutely certain my doctor didn’t know either.

Prozac Reduction Timeline