Coming off of Fluoxetine after 6 years - advice?

[plantingandpotting]

I’ve been on 20mg fluoxetine daily for 6 years.

For the first 5 years it really helped - I had a 1-year-old at the time and was struggling with intense despair, rage, and emotional flatness. The medication levelled me out and stopped the anger.

But for the past year, I’ve felt nothing: no libido, no excitement about holidays, music, or films. I’ve even had breakdowns wondering what the point of life is if I can’t feel anything.

Looking back, it made sense to be on it then - pandemic, furlough, a toddler, new area, no support network. But now I’m questioning whether I should try life without it.

I’m on 20mg (can’t split the pills), and I’ve read that with fluoxetine’s long half-life, alternating days isn’t a good tapering method because it causes withdrawal.

I’m on day 2 with no pills and already wobbling about whether this is a terrible idea. Has anyone done this before? How did you taper safely?

As 20mg is quite a low dose, the NHS advice as you have been on it for over 9 months is to reduce to 10mg for 2 to 4 weeks and then stop.

https://www.choiceandmedication.org/cambridgeshire-and-peterborough/generate/handyfactsheetcomingofffluoxetineuk.pdf

I found this same document a few minutes after posting 😂 Thank you for sharing though. I've booked an appointment with my GP for tomorrow.

Fingers crossed. I'm so fed up with the emotional blunting...whilst also being scared of the opposite. Weird place to be in.

Being honest, think carefully about this.

I totally understand your reasons for wanting to come off them and I think they're valid.

I'm on low dose sertraline and it levels me. I'm one of life's deep thinker's/over thinker's and get myself in a real tizzy. Likely have ADHD but I think the tables are turning on that diagnosis and I don't fancy being met with eye rolls and discrimination when it goes out of fashion. So won't bother with a diagnosis.

But anyone, I've digressed. I don't suffer with 'anxiety' and 'depression' as such. More overthinking and paralysis and then subsequent mood swings. So anyway, I ended up on sertraline. I tried to come off it.

Big mistake.

I was fine (even felt good for 2 weeks ) then it hit me. Rage, sadness, mood swings, Inability to cope, wanting to get drunk just to numb how I was feeling. Crying, despair. It was awful. To be honest, it made me reluctant to ever think about coming off them again.

By all means give it a go if you feel you need to. But I'd monitor your moods and wellbeing very carefully. It might be that a different drug at a low dose suits you better (in the event you need to restart )

Good luck. FWIW, I came off 40mg a few years ago without any side-effects whereas I had real problems trying to get off citalopram recently.

You can get the capsules in 10mg size.

When DD came off we alternated. (Surely the longer the half life the better alternating would work?)

Ask your GP to prescribe the liquid form then you can taper gradually however I'd see if the 10mg dose suits you