PROZAC? Would you suffer withdrawal symptoms if you missed a dose

[addictedtolatte]

I am on 20mg of fluoxetine a day and I have missed a dose for 36 hours. I now have nausea and severe headaches. This pattern has been going on for months and I am under investigation by gp for my symptoms but I have not mentioned the missing doses. The penny has just dropped that my symptoms appear 24 hours after missing a dose. Does anyone else have any experience of this? Or is it just coincidental. Thank you for reading

First of all why are you missing doses? You need to take the same dose every day for any AD to work properly. All you're doing by missing doses is making yourself feel ill. It's important that when it's the time to come off Prozac you do it really slowly to minimise withdrawal effects.

You need to talk to your doctor about what's happening and be honest as it's the only way you'll get better. If it turns out that Prozac isn't working for you, there are plenty of other ADs that you can try.

Hope things get better for you soon.

I am on 20mg, regularly miss a few days when I've forgotten my prescription and never have any ill effects.

missing for a day shouldn't make any difference as there will still be enough in your system, the problem comes if you miss a day every few days as that effectively is reducing your dosage so you may notice efecs.

If I miss my ADs one day I am so dizzy and light headed the next , it's awful my mood doesn't plummet just physical side effects from missing them.

Thank you everyone for your advice. I tend to miss doses when my prescription needs renewing :-( life just takes over and I just don't remember on time.

LEMonce I understand what your saying. This could possibly be the case with me. I will make a conscious effort to take it consistently

Random I get the dizziness as well. I can't believe I've only just made the connection between missed doses and my symptoms. I feel so foolish

That sounds like classical discontinuation reactions of the SSRIs (Prozac and its relations) but it is rare with Prozac as it has a long half life and taxes a long time to get out the system. If it happens each time it is probably that though. (Paroxetine/seroxat is the worst) I sometimes forget mine (citalopram) and after I miss 2-3 I get these symptoms.

Thanks musical :-) I have started off a diary on these vomiting episodes to see if there is a connection. Am actually hoping it is withdrawal symptoms then I can make a conscious effort to make sure it doesn't happen again

My tip is to write the days of the week on the back of the tablet packet. I take mine first thing in the morning but occasionally forget. That means later on the day I can look at the blister pack and instantly know if I've taken them or not. You could get in the habbit of checking morning and night whether you've taken them that day or not. I keep mine in my handbag as that is nearly always with me (I work FT).

if i miss mine, or even if i dont remember to take them until late afternoon , i start feeling a bit dizzy and lightheaded. I cant think properly

I am pretty sure thats what is happening to you if youre actually missing doses.

Some people react less/more to it than others