Come off sertraline and feel like I’m dying physically

[Happyharry2003]

Hi
I’ve been on sertraline for three years and also drugs that chemically brought on menopause as well as hrt (for 3 months). It turns out that I wasn’t prescribed the menopause medication correctly and it actually made me very ill - vomiting, sever body aches and chills. I’ve also felt for a long time that sertraline has just totally numbed me and due to also being in mitazapine for 6 months prior to setraline I’ve put on about 4-5 stone.

About 4 months ago I made the decision to come off everything other than the pill so I could lose some weight and work out what my body needed rather than a different doctor each time prescribing me with yet another pill that would make me put on weight.

I was on 100mg and moved to 50mg daily (dr told me to do one day on 100 and one on 0g for a few months which I knew was wrong due!). I did this for two months and then went to 25mg. Every time I dropped I felt like I was dying - sweats, skin crawling, Brian zaps, absolute panic and hallucinations. I couldn’t face doing this any longer every day I dropped a small amount so I decided to just drop totally to 0g a week and a half ago. Somehow I’ve kept going at work but it was a miracle I didn’t make a terrible mistake or crash the car due to dizziness. I’m now on annual leave. What can I do to help me get through this? I do not want to go back on as then I’ve got to go through this all over again at some point and I’ve got this far but at the same time I just feel like other than lying on my bed with a fan on, I can’t do anything. I’ve wasted so much of my children’s lives being on anti depressants and coming off them. I don’t want to waste any more. I don’t want to ask the doctor as it’s partly due to them im in this mess in the first place.

If I could hear from someone who had been through this and is now out of the other side I could perhaps get through but everything I read on line says I could feel like this for weeks, months of even years and it terrifies me.

Thank you. I think I need to stay on them now to try and regulate after the awful few weeks. I have managed to hold down my full time job but that’s about it and i am amazed I’ve done that. I have to get better for my children and if that means staying on sertraline and being overweight then I guess that’s the way it has to be. I was overweight to start with so it’s not all down the to the meds. But I think it may have been the Lupron having looked into it more. I think I had a lot of different advice during an understandably difficult time for the nhs and this has all led to the events in the last few days. I believe if I spoke to one person who listened rather than many many different stressed doctors then I may be be in a different position but I’m certainly not alone in struggling with appointments at the moment and at least I don’t have a serious illness like others. I’m not sure where to go from here but I must let the sertraline back into my system to at least stop me feeling suicidal. Where I go from there I don’t know but it seems a very long way off at the moment.
Thank you again for all your care and time x

Hi @Happyharry2003, I'm so glad you have such a supportive husband, you've done so well to get through Christmas feeling like this.

Have you come across functional medicine or functional psychiatry? It's something I've been getting into over the last few months. I'd like to come off or at least reduce my Sertraline but I think I need to be healthy enough to do it first. Functional medicine is about finding the root cause of illness rather than treating the symptoms. It puts diet and lifestyle above all else. You're welcome to
message me if you'd like the name of the person I'm seeing or anymore info.

Very sensible, Harry. I hope you quickly feel better.