Weaning down Sertraline to start Fluoxetine

[Lineofduty2021]

Been on Sertraline for a few months now and at max dose of 200mg. Wasn’t seeing much improvement so GP prescribed Fluoxetine instead. She said to wean down over a week or so then leave it 3 days before starting new ones. So I halved my dose every few days and now I’m on day 3 of nothing and feel horrendous.
Brain feels like it suddenly has this weird pressure/buzz , stops working for a few seconds and ears ring/sight blurs (not the painful brain zaps that people say are common), head spinning, feeling sick and just awful. Is this all normal for weaning off?
I could have done it more slowly but like the GP said the quicker I come off them the quicker I can start the new ones…… not sure I have done the right thing!

Dd did this but over a much longer period... weeks of lowering dosage from 200, to 175 to 150 to 100..etc she's only15

On the plus side she is doing so much better on the floxitine:) it has really made a difference unlike the sertraline

Whenever I’ve swapped ADs I’ve gone straight from one to another. The doctor advised that tapering doesn’t seem to offer any benefit, especially not to outweigh the crap feeling from the tapering.

I’ve stopped ADs a couple of times and have always felt terrible, even with a gradual taper. I would try to avoid it in future if at all possible.

That's a crazy tapering protocol, sorry. From 200 to nothing in a week is basically cold turkey. My gp was going to move me from sertraline over to fluoxetine and she said you hop direct to equivalent dose. She said this as a reassurance, as I was worried about the effects when you build up a new AD.

I'd ask again.

@twinkletoedelephant that’s good to hear she is doing much better. Really hoping these have some kind of improvement as the Sertraline just didn’t do much at all.

@Letsnotargue I don’t really understand why I couldn’t just swap from one to the other. But I was really struggling the day I saw the GP so don’t think I actually took in most of what she said and didn’t even think to ask questions.

@MorrisZapp it certainly feels like cold turkey. I feel better this evening than I did this morning. I felt absolutely beside my self this morning and didn’t know what to do.

I’m thinking I should just start the fluoxetine from tonight rather than wait until Monday evening like the GP said. Not sure why because Monday would be 5 days with nothing.