Zoloft withdrawal

Gianna at Bipolar Blast has posted today on the subject of withdrawing from psychotropic medications. She's had more pills lining her saucer recently than I have, so she's advocating a patient, cautious approach, emphasising diet and exercise. I'm currently withdrawing from Zoloft, after concluding that the side-effects - restlessness, lack of libido, inability to concentrate at work and a hair-trigger temper - outweighed its advantages. Having been on it for about twelve months, it has made me slightly more sociable, at ease with dealing with strangers in shops etc, but has had little impact on my mood.

My original plan was to cut 25mg each fortnight from a starting dose of 300mg. My shrink pooh-poohed this, saying I could easily drop 25mg a week. Being the impatient type, I agreed, and all was fine and dandy - until now. I'm down to 225mg and bloody discontinuation syndrome has kicked in already. Last Wednesday night when I was walking to my boyfriend's place, an odd feeling that had come and gone all day suddenly became overwhelming. What had earlier been the occasional twitch and shudder had morphed into legs of jelly, a face that had just seen the dentist's needle, and a body that felt as if it was trapped within a Van der Graf machine. The all-over tingling had a depersonalising effect, and as I walked through the back streets I felt like I was drifting in and out of consciousness, in spite of my motor function being apparently unimpeded. I felt somewhat better after dinner, but fever and its paradoxical shivering set in during the night, together with blurred eyesight and, of course, the inexplicable and thus unshakeable blues. And my concentration, while poor before, now limits me to performing the most routine and brief tasks at work, while the dishes and dirty washing continue to pile up.

As a teenager, I went cold turkey off Aropax/Paxil after taking it for only few weeks, with catastrophic results. Dizzyness, exhaustion and some spectacular projectile vomiting overcame me right at the end of Year 12, while I had assignments still outstanding. But what stands out in my mind now was that it was probably my first and only experience of true endogenous depression. I had never been unhappy before without a reason, and these sudden crying jags and thoughts of suicide confused me utterly. My psychiatrist ridiculed the notion that my condition had anything to do with stopping the drugs, and told me that my blood pressure was perfectly normal, and that it was all in my head, as indeed it was!

So I'll be slowing down my withdrawal regimen, I guess. People thought I was kidding when I said it might take five or six months...