I’m so glad someone else knows what I’m on about. 
I experienced no withdrawal problems.
I don’t even want to think about weaning off Paxil someday. I’d have to take vacation to do it. If I forget even one dose, I start getting dizzy and disoriented and can’t walk straight.
That’s not unusal, IME. I’ve done practically the entire anti-depressant sampler platter (from tri-cyclics to most of the most commonly prescribed SSRIs), and I too have unpleasantness if I go too far between doses. But I have never noticed a correlation between how severe those symptoms are to my experience tapering down.
I wonder if my experience is based on the fact that I’m almost always tapering off one while titrating UP on another, simultaneously.
In fact, one of the recommended techniques for getting off Effexor (the devil’s drug), is to start taking Prozac, then taper the Effexor, then taper the Prozac.
Man, I must have some good karma somewhere, because I’ve tapered off Effexor (and Zoloft) and had no problems.
In other news, I was on Paxil and didn’t realize how much it killed my libido. Until I’d gotten it out of my system and it came back like a roaring freight train. All I’m sayin’ is a) thank god I lived alone and b) that you could rent porn in Austin.
I’m just sayin.
Wow. Just, wow. That book – I read the first few pages – says something so obvious that I have always just missed/not realized. It says, medication withdrawal mimics the original psychiatric condition. The patient, who used antidepressants during a difficult time in which her son died, missed about three days of Zoloft and her symptoms came roaring back. The doctor says that since her symptoms came back so quickly, they were likely a result of withdrawal, not a result of depressive relapse. True depressive relapse would usually take a couple of months. That makes so much sense – I have HORRENDOUS symptoms even from missing two days of Paxil (I only take 20 mg). Therefore I have concluded that my body/brain needs it and I can’t possibly get by without it. And maybe that’s true. But duh maybe it’s just the withdrawal, and if I tapered, I wouldn’t need it anymore. (A lot of things are different for me now from when I started taking it 6 years ago.) I have never been ashamed of taking it, but the side effects – sexual and needing more sleep – can be annoying. Thanks for the link and OP thanks for the thread.
Not Zoloft, but Paxil which is also known for bad withdrawal (and it sounds like similar things, including the ‘zaps’). I actually found a message board dedicated to those getting off it. Some of them were taking 1/8th of a pill for months.
The worst I had was bad nausea and that’s when I found out that ginger solves that wonderfully.
I stopped taking Zoloft when I had a sudden attack of vertigo, looked around the room and honestly thought I had dreamed my entire life up to that point. I had no idea who the people around me (my co-workers and classmates) were for a good five minutes.
I started taking one pill every other day for a couple of weeks, then a pill whenever I felt like I needed it until the bottle was empty. I don’t recall any joint problems. I do recall being able to remember and feel things again. I also gained fifty pounds on that stuff. I’m not a big fan of antidepressants. I don’t think I really needed them but the university psychiatry staff was filled with drug 'em and shove 'em out the door people.