I have been on and off SSRI’s for the past 5 years. First it was Zoloft, then Paxil, and finally Effexor. (My shrink suggested a new approach to handling depression/anxiety that doesn’t involve drugs.)
Clearly, with any of the above there are side effects and they differ among people. I suffered weight gain, bizarre thoughts, and the worst; some hair loss.
Yeah, my already thin hair thinned out quite a bit. I know women that this has happened to but they are still on medication. Has this happened to any of you and did the hair come back? Did your weight gain stop or slow?
So far after 3 weeks without the meds, my mood has been good, sex drive is higher , the biazzare thoughts are waning and the doc seems confident that I can learn to cope med-free. So now I’m just waiting to see how the weight thing goes and if my hair returns to normal. Sigh.
Good luck! I have been on Zoloft for a few years, and a few times I have run out of refills and gone several days or almost a week without my medication, and the “withdrawl” symptoms suck. I get lightheaded, dizzy, tired. It’s a very strange feeling and I feel ill. After experiencing that, I decided that when I do go off, it needs to be very very gradually in order to avoid that unpleasantness. I never did lose any hair though.
I am currently about 95% recovered from a 13 year long anxiety disorder (two and a half years off drugs now, after 13 years on them) thanks to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (I hope that’s what you were referring to). If you would like to discuss this some more, my email is in my profile.
I had about a week of dealing with brain zaps after quitting effexor cold turkey. It’s very disorienting, like an electrical storm in your brain, and it feels like your brain is actually a few seconds behind the rest of your body, so when you move your head your brain takes a bit to actually (physically) follow, sloshing around inside your head.
One of the best decisions I ever made, though. I realized what it felt like to be without the anxiety and panic, and once I knew that felt like it seemed to help.
My personal experience is in no way meant as medical advice to anyone, just an anecdote:
That being said, I took Paxil for almost two years to deal with some depression following the birth of my last child. Then I quit. Cold Turkey. Like others, I had gained 25 lbs* in those two years, and had basically started starving myself to lose the weight, but kept on gaining. So I dropped the meds. I had about 10 days worth of the “zaps”…and the occasional giddy euphoria. My sex drive resurfaced, my weight gradually declined to normal, and I have had no trouble since.
*the weight gain was starting to depress me far worse than anything I had felt during the mild post-partum depression I experienced.
Thanks for the replies. I hope the mods lay off this thread since I’m not looking for medical advice. I was weaned off the drug over a period of 3 weeks so there were no brain zaps this time. Also, none of that weepy crashing that comes with cold turkey.
I have noticed that my appetite isn’t as enormous since I’ve been off of them. Why I’m here about the hair thinning is that I was told it’s a possible side effect, especially among women but no one seems to be able to tell me if it’s reversed or just slowed after cessation of the drug.
I was just looking for anecdotes. Featherlou, my current therapy is a combination cognitive/behavioral and psychoanalytic. My therapist and her methods are working out great for me after years of hit and miss with different therapists, methods and meds. I’m optimistic that she and I have made the right decision regarding losing the drugs. Perhaps I will send you that email. Thank you.
I went off of Zoloft about 5 months ago after having taken it for almost 10 years. I did a week on 3/4 of my dosage, a week on 1/2, a week on 1/4, and then none.
For about a month I would have random attacks of dizziness and near constant brain-zaps (the water-inside-the-skull or head-made-of-Jello feeling), but that tapered off after about a month, and now I’m feeling better than I have in years.
I’m not even sure if Welbutrin is in quite the same category as Zoloft and Paxil (altho it does supposedly act the same on the brain and was prescribed for depression), but after a year on that, I have to say I loved the stuff! I LOST weight, my sex drive increased, and didn’t have the shakes I had so badly with Zoloft. I weaned myself off of Welbutrin over a 3-month period, just by reducing dosage from week to week. I feel fine and don’t seem to have any lingering effects from the experience (only took Welbutrin for a year, and hadn’t taken anti-depressants for a few years prior to that), but I am on the side of those who feel Welbutrin would make an excellent appetite-depressant and weight loss aid, perhaps in lower dosages. I swear by it. It was by far the best antidepressant drug I have ever taken, and I have had some years of experience with those, altho not on a consistent basis. (I have had anxiety attacks on and off since I was 22, totally regulated by the amount of stress I was under at the time).
I vastly prefer this feeling of NOT taking an antidepressant at all, however. I hope all will go well with you now that you have taken this step, ** TCGM**. Your side effects would have truly been distressing to me as well. Best wishes!
Yeah, I tried Wellbutrin…twice. The first time I broke out in hives, stopped taking it, then my doc thought we should try it again. Anaphylactic shock is not fun kids. Not fun at all. It was, by far, the best antidepressant I had taken though. My experiences with it were like yours, ‘ceptin’ for the almost dying and all.
I’m just so sick of the SSRI’s. Sometimes I get a little nervous and wonder what the long term effects are, then I get paranoid and think of “Brave New World”
Meh, I’m going to go for a detoxifying method of living my life I guess. I quit smoking, I’m slowly switching to organic foods, meh, we’ll see what happens.
, the biazzare thoughts are waning and the doc seems confident that I can learn to cope med-free. So now I’m just waiting to see how the weight thing goes and if my hair returns to normal. Sigh.