If you got awful spikes of anxiety from SSRIs, what worked?

[glimps]

I’ve tried a couple of SSRIs for anxiety/ agoraphobia- sertraline and fluoxetine. After a couple of days on them, I had really intense spikes of supercharged anxiety. So much worse than the anxiety I was trying to help with the drugs that I discontinued both times.

If similar happened to you, did you find any SSRI that worked? I am wondering about trying escitalopram before throwing the towel in on them.

I was switched onto venlafaxine after trying citalopram, sertraline, paroxetine and mirtazipine. Have stuck with venlafaxine for over 2 years now but also prescribed clonazepam twice a day and as needed promethazine for the anxiety which has worked wonders. Might be worth discussing with your GP.

Thanks @didntsignupfothis
how did you find starting on the venlafaxine as opposed to the others?

Unfortunately SSRI’s have a tendency to increase anxiety initially, I’ve taken fluoxetine and sertraline previously and now take escitalopram. For me the escitalopram has been by far the best , started very slowly with it, breaking 5mg in half and gradually built up but it has been very effective and feels gentler somehow. Sometimes GP’s will prescribe short term valium or lorazepam to cope with the early days of SSRI’s but the escitalopram was fine with the gradual build up

Taking the Venlafaxine is the best thing I have done. Initially it made me nauseous, yawn a lot and headaches but this only lasted about 2 weeks. My emotions are stable, I do also take a mood stabiliser and antipsychotic as well as clonazepam and promethazine. But when I have missed a dose on Venlafaxine, within 24 hours I become tearful, my emotions are all over the place and generally feel low.
be advised though that if you start taking it, 1) if you miss a dose you will probably feel really unwell, get brain zaps, the shakes, sick etc as it’s known for doing that if you forget to take it and 2) it’s a bugger to come off if you decide to at any point - it cannot be done cold turkey, your GP will have to wean you off very gradually over weeks/months as the withdrawal is awful.
This isn’t to put you off it, it’s just things to consider. As I said before I’ve been on it quite a while now and have no intentions of stopping it whilst I am the best I have been in a long time ☺️