Fluoxetine and insomnia

[fara20]

Hi

Anyone here on fluoxetine? I have been having bad insomnia since on them. Waking up at 3-4am every day. I'm not entirely sure it's them, or just something I'm going through, but apparently it's quite common. Has anyone experienced this? I don't want to have to switch medication, but I also don't want to carry on with this lack of sleep.

What time of day are you taking it? If I take my SSRI in the evening it can affect my sleep

Yes, unfortunately on fluoxetine my whole days and nights got totally messed up, it really didn’t agree with me. I couldn’t have told you if I was coming or going on it! It was so bad I crashed off of it and was totally put off of medication. Although eventually I did go back and tried with some others. I notably didn’t have this with other SSRIs (although did have other milder side effects) so it might be worth switching. Sorry as I know that’s not what you wanted to hear. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had a negative experience with fluoxetine. I genuinely don’t know why they choose it as a first selection. Sertraline and citalopram have the best results for being more widely agreeable in that category.

I take it when I get up in the morning

No that's OK, I appreciate your experience. I was on citalopram for years. As I had a bad downturn due to life circumstances my GP suggested changing. maybe I need to go back to citalopram, or something else. I had a bad experience with Sertraline so I don't really want to try that again.

There is one called escitalopram which is the ‘working arm’ of citalopram without the bit that generally causes side effects.

To be honest SSRIs just weren’t strong enough for me, I ended up at the top end of them and still wasn’t really functioning so I ended up on a tri-cyclic for years but the side effects are much greater in the older medications. I tolerated them because the medication did make me better and the trade off was necessary. I am now on mirtazapine which manages my symptoms at a lower level (I have done lots of mental health work to get to this point).

Meds always work best alongside therapy - do you have access to this?

Thanks for your reply.
Unfortunately I've not had therap. NHS has booked me on an online CBT course, because of the waiting lists for anything else, which I don't have much faith is going to help.
I think I'm gonna have to switch medications. I am barely functioning on the little sleep I'm able to get and it's been like this for weeks.

I’ll send you a DM.