Anyone have any sugestions on what to take to make SSRI discontinuation less terrible? I have been taking 10mg paxil daily for 6-8 weeks, and want to get off of it. Preferably something easily obtainable. I am willing to look for opiates/benzos, if anyone can provide a logical reason they would help, and also sugest when to dose them, and when to stop so that I dont develop a tolerance for THOSE drugs.

Whenever I go cold turkey, i get horrible withdrawls, with almost all of the symptoms being present. I take paxil for really post traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety which set in after a really bad dmt trip, which I miscalculated the dose of.

If anyone has any ideas how to comfortably discontinue ssris, and treat post traumatic stress disorder in other ways, thatd be great.

My doctor refuses to acknowledge that paxil has withdrawals, so I wont be getting much help from him.

MDMA, you wont ever go back.

Seriously? If I do some pure molly while withdrawing from ssris, will it negate the effects?

Id like serious replys to this thread, and even really in depth ones. I'm sitting here with not much to do, and looking to understand what causes anxiety/how I can fix my brain, and how I can get off my medication.

Anyone who knows a lot about neurochemistry feel free to speak up, Joe Pedo would be great, as this thread was created with you in mind.

Yeah it will, actually I was joking about the MDMA!

Just go cold turkey a week or two, that's what I've been told for MAOI'S apparently there isn't anything that can actually help...

Yeah it will, actually I was joking about the MDMA!



Haha, just checking. I havn't been able to do mdma, due to being on the drugs, and wouldnt have even minded trying it :], its on the to due list after everything gets sorted out

Start taking 100 mg of 5-HTP twice a day; once in the morning and once at night.

Your doctor is basically correct in his belief that Paxil has no withdrawals- certainly not in the classic definition of "withdrawal", anyways. What you're experiencing, rather, in my belief, is the actual presentation of the symptoms which the Paxil was apparently helping you with.

I don't condone the use of SSRIs unless someone seriously needs them, and for all I or you know, you might be one of those people. What were your reasons for wanting to get off of it? I mean, I hated SSRIs, myself, for my own reasons- one of which was the fact that they were ineffective- but everyone has their own complaints so I'm curious as to what kind of problems you were experiencing while taking the meds.

My doctor refuses to acknowledge that paxil has withdrawals, so I wont be getting much help from him.

They do have withdrawals; not just the return of original symptoms. They're not addictive in the usual way of dose-escalation etc., but they might as well be 'cause you'll feel like shit for a good few weeks.

I guarantee that benzos will help, especially for the anxiety. Just take as much as you can while still remaining functional enough to live -- you're not gonna be going in to work/school while on proper withdrawals, so you might as well make it bearable.

5-HTP was a good suggestion, but I think l-tryptophan might be better as I heard it lasts longer and 5-HTP gives me horrible nausea. I'd also hesitantly recommend St. John's Wort, since it is an SSRI but doesn't have known withdrawals (meaning it presumably doesn't alter serotonin receptors like pharmaceutical SSRIs) so hopefully wouldn't slow down the recovery.

Obviously any feel-good drugs like opiates will help. You might want to get on an MAOI for that period; maybe an unselective one because selegiline can heighten anxiety.

You may want to look into anticonvulsants and GABA-augmenting drugs for the anxiety and sleep issues (maybe also GHB for sleep).

I highly advise you NOT to use benzos to curb the anxiety related to your Paxil discontinuation.

lol word^

i dropped like 3 diff ssri's without telling anyone when i was a young kid, and i sdgest you do it the same and just take it as it comes. no need to medicate yourself outside of a bowl. just be happy that you can feel feelings again.

would you say SSRI's cause a dependency?

no they dot. not chemically. but my personal experience with them went as follows:

they are good at making you not feel 'depressed' anymore, but thats all they do. it took away the egregious pain and sadness and it left me at that. this void existence. i wasn't chemically depressed anymore, but i wasnt mentally on the right path so i still felt the same way as i did about things when i was depressed.

so now not only could i not feel happiness like i normally didn't, but i couldn't feel sad and that void of nothing was so much worse than the depression.

so i never took them again and in time changed. the problem as i see it with depression medication is this: even if it is chemical in nature, calling it a chemical problem is a falsie. your brain lacks the chemical balance because there is a problem in your mind that is causing your brain to change its balance to respond to what YOU are thinking. if you dope the imbalance away, your brain still has that same problem, it just isnt telling you anymore. if you can address this problem and have come to terms with it but are having a problem feeling happy anyway, ssri's may help you break free. but as it is with so many of us who try them at some point in our lives, we don't solve the problem before we try to answer it.

if there are thoughts in your head that are so bothering they make you depressed, taking a chemical to make you feel happy wont fix that. only you can fix it by addressing, thinking about, sorting out, and coming to terms with the mental problems or life style problems that caused the sadness.

99 out of 100 people would tell you not to bang H to make yourself happy and your problems go away.
but far fewer would tell you there is no difference in taking ssri's. the difference is in chemical, but both chemicals are doing the same thing. trying to make the problem null, without solving the problem.

depression and seratonin deficiencies are nothing more than your brain telling you that you are sad and need to think about something. just like how people are with stress. stress is a chemical response by your brain to tell you to think or do something. depression is the same.


Drugs and Science are wonderful things, but when the problem is that of thought and the mind, its not a matter of medicine its a matter of the mind and must be taken care of as such.

Just stop taking them... They are only SSRIs and its not like you have been taking them for a piticularly long time. I would recomend avoiding using more drugs to avoid what would be trivial withdrawal at best.

1. I'll look into 5htp, ive heard some good things about it.

2. I get some pretty bad headaches/nasuea/inablity to move without vomiting/wanting to kill myself to make my mental uncomfortability to stop, none of those symptoms were present before SSRI use, so Id have to attribute them to the withrawls, although you may be right

3. In me they cause some sexual disfunction, and a pretty good "numbing" of my emotions. Being 17 and having a half working penis is kind of a kick in the balls, to say the least. I also haven't been HAPPY in a good while. Yes my anxiety response is completely diminished, but whether or not I can credit that to the SSRI is yet to be determined, we'll find out within the next coming weeks if I actually NEED the medication still, at the time I started taking it, I most certainly did.

They do have withdrawals; not just the return of original symptoms. They're not addictive in the usual way of dose-escalation etc., but they might as well be 'cause you'll feel like shit for a good few weeks.

I guarantee that benzos will help, especially for the anxiety. Just take as much as you can while still remaining functional enough to live -- you're not gonna be going in to work/school while on proper withdrawals, so you might as well make it bearable.

5-HTP was a good suggestion, but I think l-tryptophan might be better as I heard it lasts longer and 5-HTP gives me horrible nausea. I'd also hesitantly recommend St. John's Wort, since it is an SSRI but doesn't have known withdrawals (meaning it presumably doesn't alter serotonin receptors like pharmaceutical SSRIs) so hopefully wouldn't slow down the recovery.

Obviously any feel-good drugs like opiates will help. You might want to get on an MAOI for that period; maybe an unselective one because selegiline can heighten anxiety.

You may want to look into anticonvulsants and GABA-augmenting drugs for the anxiety and sleep issues (maybe also GHB for sleep).

I think I might try altering opiates/benzos whenever the symptoms get too much. I'm generally careful with opiates/benzos as to not get addicted, and I'll still remain careful with them.

I just slept for like 15 hours, after not sleeping for a few days, I mainly used pot to get through the beginning stages of withdrawl, but I'm starting to feel pretty shitty again now. I bit one of my 10mg paxil pills in half about 45 minutes ago, in a futile attempt to relieve SOME of the symptomes, its working a bit, now I can actually think straight.

Mentally, no. Physically, yes. Atleast from my experience. I have no cravings for them, they mental effect they produce takes too long to take effect, and is so gradual that I dont associate them with "feeling good" as with other drugs, especially recreational ones. Physically, they must, or else I dont know why Id be feeling this ill.

I'm going to try to keep benzo use to as minimum as possible, I could see myself becoming dependent on this class of drugs, so I try to remain as abstinent as possible.

I agree mostly with this post. I feel that SSRIs, MDMA, and a ton of recreational drugs can be used THERAPEUTICALLY to treat depression. In the absence of popper counseling, or personal reflection, all of them are useless however, and simply mask the symptoms. This is what leads to addiction/mental dependence. I have been working to overcome my anxiety issues mentally, and feel that I am at the point where I can see if I am "normal" enough to discontinue the drugs, and see if I am able to live my life as I had been living it a year ago.

I thought i was "normal" enough to stop wellbutrin, turns out it was what was making me normal.

I feel like they are stopping anxiety, and causing a depression. I am hoping I was able to work through my anxiety to enough of an extent where I can live a happy life.

Well, all SSRIs do carry the risk of worsening depression, especially in teenagers and adolescents. That's why the FDA requires them to carry a Black Box warning.

There are a lot of other PTSD treatments; speak with your doctor about the possibility of trying a different route. If an SSRI caused worsened depression in you, chances are that any doctor with half a brain is going to steer your treatment in a different direction.

Hope it works out for you though, man. I know the whole psych-med shit sucks, believe me. I'd be hard-pressed to find a depression/anxiety medication I haven't taken...including the shit that shouldn't be prescribed for that (400 mg Seroquel nightly for eight months straight= not good times).

Yes, but not in the sense that something like opiates or benzos do. They don't provide an immediate pleasurable feeling, or really any direct pleasurable effects at all, which removes many of the psychological aspects of dependency, but any sort of change in dosage causes a mild but still very undesirable general feeling of shittiness. If you don't taper off properly when you stop taking them you'll feel like a bag of shit mentally and physically for 2 or 3 weeks, at least I did when I stopped Zoloft. It's not much worse than how crappy you feel for the first week or so when you start taking them though, that sucks ass too. I'm fairly certain that it wasn't just me not agreeing with the Zoloft, the psychologist who prescribed them told me that feeling sick when the dose changes is normal.

SSRIs, or at least Zoloft which is the only one I have experience with, in general are kinda shit, they take weeks to start working properly and just as long to stop and once they do start doing what they're supposed to and you don't feel like you have the flu or something all the time you just feel a bit more numb to all emotion, positive or negative, or at least that's how it was for me. I was much quieter, less excitable, and while it softened bad experiences or thoughts, it also seemed to equally reduce my capacity for being extremely happy or otherwise positive, even when I had actual, tangible reasons to feel as such that did not involve ingesting other drugs.

It could have just been placebo but I swear I noticed a difference in the distance between the "peaks and valleys" of emotion that everyone experiences to some extent when I stopped taking it. The fact that it takes 2 or 3 weeks for them to start or stop working fully makes it kinda hard to tell though. Still, feeling crappy all day because you forgot to take a pill that doesn't even make you feel good or really do anything worthwhile is a fucking pain in the ass.

Maybe SSRIs are great if you're the sort of person who's on top of the world one minute and contemplating suicide the next, but if you're even close to normal they'll probably do more harm than good to your overall mental state, not to mention they don't mix with several much more worthwhile substances. Someone who experiences extreme emotions like that must already have an neurotransmitter imbalance of some sort, so SSRIs might be just what they need, but to be honest I think a lot of "depressed" people who are prescribed SSRIs would do better with a serious, introspective trip or two on whatever hallucinogen they feel is best for them.

Definitely not for everyone, but a truly visionary experience can be just what you need to gain some perspective and get your real priorities in order. At least in my case what was diagnosed as depression was more of a natural uncertainty about my long term goals which manifested itself as a general lack of motivation in all aspects of my life (this was years before I started smoking bud so don't say "amotivational syndrome").

A couple very successful experiences with hallucinogens did a lot more to improve my day to day mood and outlook on life than Zoloft, and I haven't taken any sort of dissociative or psychedelic in several months, unless you count weed. Identifying and working to correct the sources of your "depression" is a lot more constructive than trying to directly alter your brain chemistry every day to blunt whatever psychological hardship you might be experiencing.

Fuck, this ended up being much longer than I had originally pictured, I'm stopping now so I don't spend all afternoon writing about my experience with SSRIs and why I think they're shit for the vast majority of people because I could without trying, even if I hadn't been taking amphetamines for the past day and a half.

tl;dr: Fuck SSRIs, most of the people on them are unhappy for actual reasons and need to correct those before they consider the possibility of a natural neurotransmitter imbalance which can be corrected with SSRIs. And they make you feel like shit for weeks when you stop, start or change your daily dosage.

Yes, but not in the sense that something like opiates or benzos do. Besides the fact they don't provide an immediate pleasurable feeling, or really any direct pleasurable effects at all so there's no psychological addiction. If you don't taper off properly though you'll feel like a bag of shit mentally and physically for 2 or 3 weeks though, at least I did when I stopped Zoloft. It's not much worse than how crappy you feel for the first week or so when you start taking them though, that sucks ass too.

SSRIs, or at least Zoloft which is the only one I have experience with, in general are kinda shit, they take weeks to start working properly and just as long to stop and once they do start doing what they're supposed to and you don't feel like you have the flu or something all the time you just feel a bit more numb to all emotion, positive or negative, or at least that's how it was for me.

It could have just been placebo but I swear I noticed a difference in the distance between the "peaks and valleys" of emotion that everyone experiences to some extent when I stopped taking it. The fact that it takes 2 or 3 weeks for them to start or stop working fully makes it kinda hard to tell though. Still, feeling crappy all day because you forgot to take a pill that doesn't even make you feel good or really do anything worthwhile is a fucking pain in the ass.

Maybe SSRIs are great if you're the sort of person who's on top of the world one minute and contemplating suicide the next, but if you're even close to normal they'll probably do more harm than good to your overall mental state, not to mention they don't mix with several much more worthwhile substances. Someone who's like that must already have an neurotransmitter imbalance of some sort, but to be honest I think a lot of "depressed" people who are prescribed SSRIs would do better with a serious, introspective trip or two on whatever hallucinogen they feel is best for them. A certain very successful experience with DXM did a lot more to improve my day to day mood and outlook on life than Zoloft.

tl;dr: Fuck SSRIs, most of the people on them don't need them and they make you feel like shit when you stop, start or change your daily dosage.

Zoloft made me fat, ruined my relationship with family, and made me cut myself.

tl;dr: Fuck SSRIs

Yes, but not in the sense that something like opiates or benzos do. They don't provide an immediate pleasurable feeling, or really any direct pleasurable effects at all, which removes many of the psychological aspects of dependency, but any sort of change in dosage causes a mild but still very undesirable general feeling of shittiness. If you don't taper off properly when you stop taking them you'll feel like a bag of shit mentally and physically for 2 or 3 weeks, at least I did when I stopped Zoloft. It's not much worse than how crappy you feel for the first week or so when you start taking them though, that sucks ass too. I'm fairly certain that it wasn't just me not agreeing with the Zoloft, the psychologist who prescribed them told me that feeling sick when the dose changes is normal.

SSRIs, or at least Zoloft which is the only one I have experience with, in general are kinda shit, they take weeks to start working properly and just as long to stop and once they do start doing what they're supposed to and you don't feel like you have the flu or something all the time you just feel a bit more numb to all emotion, positive or negative, or at least that's how it was for me. I was much quieter, less excitable, and while it softened bad experiences or thoughts, it also seemed to equally reduce my capacity for being extremely happy or otherwise positive, even when I had actual, tangible reasons to feel as such that did not involve ingesting other drugs.

It could have just been placebo but I swear I noticed a difference in the distance between the "peaks and valleys" of emotion that everyone experiences to some extent when I stopped taking it. The fact that it takes 2 or 3 weeks for them to start or stop working fully makes it kinda hard to tell though. Still, feeling crappy all day because you forgot to take a pill that doesn't even make you feel good or really do anything worthwhile is a fucking pain in the ass.

Maybe SSRIs are great if you're the sort of person who's on top of the world one minute and contemplating suicide the next, but if you're even close to normal they'll probably do more harm than good to your overall mental state, not to mention they don't mix with several much more worthwhile substances. Someone who experiences extreme emotions like that must already have an neurotransmitter imbalance of some sort, so SSRIs might be just what they need, but to be honest I think a lot of "depressed" people who are prescribed SSRIs would do better with a serious, introspective trip or two on whatever hallucinogen they feel is best for them.

Definitely not for everyone, but a truly visionary experience can be just what you need to gain some perspective and get your real priorities in order. At least in my case what was diagnosed as depression was more of a natural uncertainty about my long term goals which manifested itself as a general lack of motivation in all aspects of my life (this was years before I started smoking bud so don't say "amotivational syndrome").

A couple very successful experiences with hallucinogens did a lot more to improve my day to day mood and outlook on life than Zoloft, and I haven't taken any sort of dissociative or psychedelic in several months, unless you count weed. Identifying and working to correct the sources of your "depression" is a lot more constructive than trying to directly alter your brain chemistry every day to blunt whatever psychological hardship you might be experiencing.

Fuck, this ended up being much longer than I had originally pictured, I'm stopping now so I don't spend all afternoon writing about my experience with SSRIs and why I think they're shit for the vast majority of people because I could without trying, even if I hadn't been taking amphetamines for the past day and a half.

tl;dr: Fuck SSRIs, most of the people on them are unhappy for actual reasons and need to correct those before they consider the possibility of a natural neurotransmitter imbalance which can be corrected with SSRIs. And they make you feel like shit for weeks when you stop, start or change your daily dosage.

Word.

For me SSRIs increase your ability to do what you know is right and what will help long-term in your life, but seem to reduce the actual pleasure and emotion you feel.

It's not ideal to experience life through SSRIs, but compared to the lives some anxious/depressed people have before them, they can be worthwhile.