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Health & Fitness, Rant

Anxiety Medication Withdrawal Fail-2

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To continue the series of posts about my battle with anxiety, I bring the latest medication withdrawal fail story.

As I wrote here, after my last misadventure with SSRIs, I stopped taking them altogether. Since I felt fine for the next few weeks, I assumed that I don’t really need them and forgot all about them since.

PC: Verywellmind

However, ever so slowly, my anxiety started to creep up back on me. There weren’t any drastic symptoms. Just things like worrying too much about work, thinking about work at night or during weekends. Also, the ever present feeling of dread that something will eventually go wrong.

I was very proud of myself for having successfully(?) given up this medication and wanted to prevent another medication withdrawal fails. So I decided to continue without it.

After I spent 3 successive weekends obsessing over work and dreading Monday, I decided I would keep my mind open about resuming the medicine and gave myself 1 month to decide, till my next doctor appointment. I didn’t last 1 month.

Last weekend, after dreading work all Saturday and most of Sunday, I decided to give up and go back on the medication there and then. I called the hospital & requested to see the doctor the same day. Thankfully they were able to put me on the waiting list and I saw the doctor within the hour. He took pity on me and put me back on Lexapro.

After bagging the medication, I immediately felt better. The world looked brighter and life seemed more beautiful. Of course this was a placebo effect as the medication takes up to 2 weeks to work. Over the next day or so, the placebo effect wore off, but a week since starting the medication, I already feel better.

Second reminder to myself, to not mess with medication that work well.

Also, it’s not worth avoiding medication (and for what?) if it works for you and makes you feel better

Health & Fitness, Rant

The Serotonin Misadventure

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Recently, I had a misadventure with my serotonin levels. As I posted earlier, I have been on Neuris 1mg- An Antipsychotic & Lexapro 5mg- An SSRI for my Generalized Anxiety Disorder since I moved to Thailand.

Now, the Lexapro, in Thailand costs 15 times what it cost in India. Always one trying to cheap out, on my last doctor’s visit, I asked him if he could prescribe me a cheaper alternative. He prescribed me Fluoxetine 20mg instead and I happily went on my way chalking this up as a win.

After a few days, I started noticing signs of heart palpitations and sweats through the day. I had recently joined a gym so I chalked this up to the workouts. However, the palpitations became worse with time.

It was not until my family left for vacation leaving me alone with my dog at home that the symptoms hit hard.

I was in a state of constant anxiety. My heart felt it was going to burst out of my chest. To make matters worse, I took a Lexapro, too. It really pushed me over the edge and after suffering all day from a constant state of agitation I dumped my dog with the neighbours and went to the ER.

Serotonin Misadventure
Saw many such alerts throughout the day

They said I have Serotonin Syndrome, from an overdose of SSRIs. They shot me up with a sedative and sent me home with a few pills of Ativan. Ah! Bliss!

I slept for 11 hours and woke up the next day feeling much better. Things didn’t go back to normal immediately, but I could feel the improvements over the next few days; all I had to do was not take the SSRIs.

Lesson Learnt : Don’t mess with medication that work, just to cheap out.

PS: On SSRIs, I used to have vivid movie-like dreams. After stopping the SSRIs, the dreams stopped, too.

Health & Fitness, Rant

Anxiety Medication Withdrawal Fail

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As discussed before, I have been on medication to treat my GAD for the past few years. I was lucky to have found a doctor who prescribed me medication instead of sending me to therapy. The medication had been working beautifully, but I always assumed that I won’t take them forever. When I moved to Bangkok, I decided to quit, as I won’t find a doctor here to continue the prescription. I put it off for many months fearing medication withdrawal. Running low on supplies, few weeks ago, I decided that that time was here.

I had been on the following medication to treat my GAD

Medication withdrawal

With high optimism and hope in my heart, I started the process of quitting, one medication at a time.

Levowave

Getting off Levowave was relatively easy. First I halved my dose for a week and then changed it to 3 days a week, then stopped completely. I had some confusion, irritability, anxiety, tremors for a couple of days but after that I was back to normal. No impact on sleep at all.

I assumed that the withdrawal for the other medications would be as easy. How wrong I was!

Buspin

I assumed this one would be the easiest to stop, but I was dead wrong. I halved the dose and in just 2 days, shit hit the fan.

  • Night 1/Day 2 – Uneventful
  • Night 2 – On night 2, suddenly I woke up at 01:00 AM with my heart beating fast, for no apparent reason. I was up for an hour, but was able to go back to (restless) sleep afterwards.
  • Day 2 – The entire day I was full of anxiety, irritable and confused. Lost my appetite. There was also a phase where I had to abuse random strangers on twitter for no reason.
  • Night 3 – Night 3 was horrible. I slept at 21:30 but woke up at 23:00. After that whatever I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I either felt too hot (sweating) or too cold (shivering). After tossing and turning for hours and rousing the rest of my family, I think I finally managed to fall asleep at 04:00. Libido was also up 10x. Heart rate was above 90 bpm throughout.
  • Day 3 – Day 3 started slightly better than Day 2. I started running again, which brought back my appetite. But later in the day, my heart rate rose above 100bps doing nothing. A sense of doom & gloom pervaded my brain and I had only negative thoughts.

I Quit

Sometime in the afternoon of Day 3, I realised that I cannot go through with this and decided to go back on my remaining pills. I booked a doctor’s appointment to get a prescription to resume the medication.

Day 4 – I woke up refreshed after 10 hours of beautiful sleep. The world seemed brighter, and life seemed more beautiful.

After resuming my medication, I finally saw a doctor here. Fortunately, he was kind and patient and prescribed me medication to continue. Unfortunately, not all my medication is available in Thailand, so I have to switch medication.

After all this, I am extremely grateful for my medicines and medical science in general. I will never again take them for granted.