Hello 🙂 The withdrawal was pretty bad for the first 3 weeks. Then the brain zaps started to settle down. Brain zaps were always the worst withdrawal symptom for me so that hit me harder than anything else. It took about 6 weeks for me to feel totally free from brain zaps.
I never took Sertraline for depression (I took it for chronic fatigue syndrome) but it obviously had an affect on how my brain functioned too without me realising. On Sertraline my emotions were always pretty even. I just thought I was quite a chill person but turns out Sertraline was diing that.
After the 6 weeks of detox I noticed that I was feeling emotions more strongly. I felt joy, compassion and empathy much more strongly. Everything seemed to “get me in the feels”. I had to ban myself from watching dog rescue videos on YouTube as I ended up a blubbering mess lol.
However I would also swing to the other end of the emotional spectrum with feeling really negative, anxious and a bit short tempered. I had been on Sertraline for 14 years so most of my adult life so it felt a like being a teenager again and struggling to control my emotions.
The emotional rollercoaster lasted about 3 months and did settle down. I did find that part difficult to deal with as it was completely unexpected. Like I said I never took Sertraline for depression so feeling all of that was a bit of a shock so I thought I’d share that aspect of it so that you’re not surprised too.
Unfortunately after 6 months I had to go back on Sertraline as my symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome returned. Looking back on it I think I made the right choice to come off it cold turkey as it was the fasted way to get rid the brain zaps withdrawal symptom as cutting it down slowly was a worse experience. If physical side effects is your reason for going cold turkey too then I would definitely recommend that method. However if you were on Sertraline for depression or anxiety I would strongly recommend NOT coming off it cold turkey so that you don’t experience the teenage emotional rollercoaster.
please update me in a month to tell me how you got on ❤️