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?

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

Withdrawal from Citalopram is horrible, but it will pass.

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!

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

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.