Reduced citalopram ad feeling very odd

[Alchemist]

With GP guidance I reduced my dose from 30 to 20mg 10 days ago and I am feeling so strange and ill.

I've broken out in huge coldsores and have come on today (on HRT and pissed off am post-meno but still having "periods"). With both of those I know how to cope but I am so very anxious, cold, hot and then I seem to be just tuning out. I feel like I have a heavy cold and just ill. I honestly don't know how to explain it.

I think this is part of ther withdrawal but this has scared me. I started taking it in the days after eh left so have been on it approx. 18 months and, stupidly, thought it would be ok to reduce. Shows how addled I was but I think this is normalish?

Is it?

[Alchemist]

I mean I thought reducing the dose would be easy but this doesn't feel easy at all.

[coolaschmoola]

Withdrawal from Citalopram is horrible, but it will pass.

[sneakybollox]

Yes, IME this is very normal. I've had 3 stints on citalopram and each time the streaks withdrawals have left me feeling like I've got a cold, I've had the sweats and the dreaded 'brain zap'. The good news it the symptoms really do ease in a couple of weeks to a manageable level, not disappear, but they do ease. Good luck!

[Branleuse]

Thats quite a big reduction I think. I would actually drop it by 5mg a time, and if thats still weird, then try dropping it by 2.5mg a week.

You can get citalopram prescribed in liquid form. My friend managed to come off it really gradually with the liquid, after many many failed attempts at reducing tablets.

I came off my antids (venlafaxine) about 6 months ago, and did it gradually, with a pill splitter from a chemist.

The times before when i tried to reduce too quickly, i felt ill and dizzy

[violator]

A pharmacist in my family explained to me that SSRI antidepressants affect histamine, among other things. Which also explained why I didn't suffer the usual bad hay fever while taking meds!
Anyway, reducing or eliminating the meds mean your histamine will go haywire for a bit. I felt like I was getting the flu, hard to explain like you said, but I had pains everywhere, felt like I'd been hit by a bus.

I did wean from 10mgs to 0 over six months and had that happen, but it did pass relatively quickly.