Paxil Withdrawal Hell---Help!

This is a question to all who have experienced paxil withdrawal. I remember from previous threads that some Dopers have gone through this. How long did the withdrawal symptoms last once you were down to 0 mg? Oh, and someone tell me the electrical shocks (the zaps) won’t last forever.

Well, it was several years ago, and was zoloft, (a related drug). My withdrawal symptoms started out horribly, but that was because I’d misunderstood my doc’s orders and had quit cold turkey.

She had me cutting back about half a pill at a time, and then the last couple of days quarters at a time. It worked out really well.

For about a week, I had flu-like symptoms, but none of those “rushy” electrical shock thingies, that I’d experienced when trying to go cold turkey.

JMHO, but make sure you’re tapering off at the correct dosage, hopefully that will help.

I did it about a year and a half ago. Once I finally worked my way down to ‘none’, the symptoms only lasted about another week or so. By the time I got down to none, it wasn’t too bad, but those last few weeks prior to reaching that point – where I was taking about 5mg worth, were pretty bad. And don’t worry, the internal tremors, as I called them, disappeared with the other symptoms!

I had the ‘zappies’ coming off efexor (a related drug) - I came off it pretty quick (without the doctor’s permission :S )…after a couple of weeks everything was back to normal.

Thanks for the reassurance.

Once I got down to 0 mg the zaps weant away quite quickly. But I was a week on 1/8 th of a tablet before I could go down to zero. For me it was deffinately worse during the ramping down of the dose, than once I hit zero. Good luck, take it easy and if you can avoid driving whilst the zaps are happening.
{{{mala}}}

Hey mala—Fortunately, I’ve never gone through the “zaps” (I’m down to 20 mg right now from 40). One website I’ve seen recommends Dramamine to cope with the nausea, and apparently that also has some effects on the zaps as well. I’ve had more of a problem with nausea than with other symptoms.

Apparently when you get your dose really low, you can get Paxil in a liquid form, so you can step down one mg at a time rather than spending all your time splitting pills :slight_smile:

Thanks for the advice, guys. I took the stupid route and quit paxil pretty much cold turkey. I went from taking 20 mg a day since March, to taking 10 mg one day, and 0 mg the next. Not exactly the appropriate way to taper off, but I really had no idea about the kind of hell that was in store for me. Its been 9 days so far, and I seem to be doing better, but I’m nowhere near 100%. The nausea, unsteady gait, confusion, headaches, cog fog, and poor balance were debilitating, but its not as bad now. My only real problem now are the zaps and the overwhelming feelings of anger I have for Glaxosmith Kline; the makers of paxil. I can’t wrap my brain around the fact that they are still allowed to call paxil non-habit forming. I also can’t believe that a lot of doctors don’t know about these horrid withdrawal symptoms. I sent an online report to the FDA’s Medwatch. I urge everyone who has shared my experience to do the same. Here is a link in case you want to report adverse effects with paxil, or any other drug.
http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/

In Glaxo’s defense, there’s probably a pretty specific definition for “non-habit forming”, and to the best of my knowledge Paxil isn’t habit-forming. I know that when I was on Paxil (and tapering down off it), I certainly had no particular desire (either physically or psychologically) to continue taking it, so I certainly wouldn’t consider it habit-forming.

And going cold turkey like you did is definitely the wrong way to go. When I was tapering down from a 20-mg dose, I spent a week each at 10, 5, 2.5, 1, and 0.5 mg daily, and still felt withdrawal symptoms for a week after discontinuing use.

I think of habit forming as something you crave once you don’t have it. People don’t exactly take Paxil recreationally. I believe they also warn against stopping suddenly.

Doctors often downplay or completely fail to mention the withdrawal effects of these drugs. My doctor didn’t discuss them at all until I asked her about it as a result of my own research.

I withdrew from Remeron (again, similar to the other drugs mentioned here) about 6 months ago. I withdrew extremely slowly over a 6 month period and still suffered some pretty horrible withdrawal symptoms. I mentioned to my doctor that my symptoms seemed to be worst at about 2 or3 weeks after I was completely off of it. She sat there and argued with me that it can’t last more than a week. I was living it, so I think I know what I am feeling.

Doctors believe what the drug reps tell them, and it is not in the drug company’s interest to call attentions to discontinuation symptoms.

By the way, my symptoms faded to nothing pretty quickly after about 3 or 4 weeks. Yours may not last so long. I’ve heard that the length of time you were on the drug can affect how long you have symptoms of withdrawal.