Has anyone (successfully) done this? I've been on it for several years (was on prozac and then venlafaxine before this) and think I was on 20 at one point but can't really remember - I am now on 10. I get really annoying side-effects (no sex drive) so desperately want to come off it. I went to see my GP and got the same line I got a few years ago from a different GP (in a different country) - 'Take 10 one day, 5 the other for a week, then cut back further the following week.' I am assuming that anyone who has ever tried to come off antidepressants knows it is not that easy, and you need to take waaaay more time. Yesterday I took 5 and I got really tense, the same feeling I get when I forget to take a pill - a really tight jaw and tenseness in my arms. It lasted halfway through today, even though I took 10 this morning. My plan is to do 5-10-10-5-10-10 for as long as it takes for the withdrawal to subside and to then switch to 5-10-5-10. Haven't thought about what to do beyond that then.
I read a really good article about coming off antidepressants a while ago (unfortunately not in English), which made two really interesting points. Firstly, withdrawal symptoms are often hard to distinguish from the symptoms that made you take the pills in the first place, so feeling anxious/ jittery/ scared etc might not necessarily mean that your symptoms are returning. Secondly, the amount you reduce your dosage by needs to get smaller and smaller (so going from 20 to 15 is fine, but is a smaller step than going from 15 to 10, for example) - you might have to be on a really low (and officially clinically insignificant) dose for a long time before you stop taking the pills entirely, as going from 5 to zero means going cold turkey and is therefore definitely not the same as going from 10 to 5.
I know this is a long post, I was just curious to hear other people's opinions and thought I'd share what I knew about it, in the hope it helps. Look forward to hearing from you.
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Mental health
Coming off citalopram
20 replies
Puffinity · 26/04/2016 22:33
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