SSRI Withdrawal

[sanmagic7]

how awful!  i'm so sorry this is happening to you!

dang, getting off these things can certainly be a nightmare.  i'll be so happy for you when this is finally over for you and you can feel somewhat 'normal' again.  best to you in getting through this day.  that is my mantra at times - just help me get through today.  it's a day to day struggle, for sure.  my heart is with you. 

[Three Roses]

  to you, Danaus! So sorry this is happening to you

[Danaus plexippus]

I'm calming down emotionally, the mental fog is beginning to thin a bit, but I'm still painfully fatigued and generally just feel like a wet blanket. This evening  I'm invited to a wonderful party at an eclectic venue with a very artsy and environmentally invested crowd. This would be the perfect opportunity for me to  promote the environmental event I'm hosting next week, but I'm tired now, first thing in the morning! For years now my one burning desire is to just go home and crash. I'm under doctors orders to socialize, but these same doctors only ever prescribe medications that have side effects of exacerbating my fatigue. I feel like my doctors are double binding me, setting me up for failure. I'm tired of titrating myself off this poison, going through faze after faze of emotional liability every time I drop the dosage down. This slow careful method of pulling the Band-Aid off one hair at a time sucks. I want to get it over with already. No doctor is ever going to talk me into taking any kind of antidepressant ever, ever again. Life is passing me by, while my doctors medicate me into a state of ever increasing inertia. A very tiny little spark of life wants me to go out tonight, tells me I'll regret it if I don't. A much larger lumpin part of me want's me to go home and go to bed right now and stay there forever. Maybe I should not be afraid of being locked up. I'd fit right in with the rest of the human lumps. 

[sanmagic7]

hang in there.  it's happening, even tho it's a drag.  eventually you'll be off this crap and be done with it.  just hold on . . .

[Danaus plexippus]

I feel like one massive raw nerve. I was so incapacitated this weekend. Friday evening I never showed up to my friend's birthday party. Saturday afternoon I blew off a standing luncheon date with a very dear friend. Sunday I turned down an invitation to spend Labor day weekend with another friend. I'm retreating into my own misery.

A hummingbird visited the garden where I volunteer and I totally failed to make a video of it for YouTube. Sunday I had a black swallowtail butterfly on one of my orchids. I was so out of it, I recorded the scene vertically instead of horizontally. I did not realize what I had done until later when I went to upload it. I shoved the crap pile on my kitchen table and heard the sound of a lovely flower pot my mother had made before she died, smash to pieces on the floor below. My internal critic went ballistic. I was painfully tired and went to bed in the early afternoon. Didn't get up to after 6:00 p.m.

Before I went to bed again Sunday I viewed an annoying motivational YouTuber. It's vaguely possible she may take credit for putting the suggestion in my head that I should get out of bed this morning. I was perhaps suggestible in my semiconscious state. One of the points she kept hammering on about was "Figure out what you want, and just do it!" Well I want to get off antidepressants, clean my apartment, hold onto my job, stop losing things and breaking things and reconnect with all my friends that I totally lacked the capacity to accommodate while titrating down off Sertraline and going through discontinuation syndrome, A. K. A. WITHDRAWAL! I don't really recommend her, but what the *, here's the link: https://youtu.be/Lp7E973zozc       

[sanmagic7]

it sounds like withdrawal, a nasty animal, and you're dealing with it as best you can.  you can give yourself credit for it.  this crap you're going through is an indication of how powerful these drugs are.  they change so much about us, and our brains get used to them very quickly.  eventually, it will normalize on its own.  hang in there!

really sorry about your mom's pot.  total bummer.  sucks.

[Three Roses]

  to you, Danaus   I'm sorry you're going thru this.

[Dutch Uncle]

I don't really recommend her, but what the *, here's the link: https://youtu.be/Lp7E973zozc       

For what it's worth, I did try to listen to her, but a few minutes in I got thus much annoyed by her 'driving the point home', I switched it off.

  for trying this. I hope and wish the withdrawal symptoms will slowly but surely subside.

[Danaus plexippus]

I just took my last 50 MG dose of Sertraline. My doctor agreed to titrate me down to 25 MG QD. It's been suggested I might need to be placed on medication for bipolar 2. Until I get the Sertraline completely cleared out of my system I'm not making any further decisions about medications.

[Three Roses]

I'm rooting for you, Danaus! Hope all this gets resolved soon and you can start feeling better.

[sanmagic7]

i echo 3roses' comment.   i'm glad your doc is helping you with this.  and, i agree that it's probably a good idea to wait before making more medication decisions.  you may want to find out how long this med stays in the body after you stop taking it, so you know when you're absolutely clear of it.  hopefully, any other medication will be a more positively productive experience.   

[Danaus plexippus]

It's been a few days now since my doctor titrated me down to 25 milligrams. This weekend is the first time I've been able to thread a needle in over a year. I have such a mountain of mending to do. I feel so satisfied to finally be able to begin.

[Three Roses]

That's really great news!    

[sanmagic7]

YAY!!!  love it when things start coming together in a good way!

[Danaus plexippus]

I got up when the alarm went off, fed the cats, scooped the poop, fed the birds, watered the plants, got dressed in something I had on last week that never quite made it into the laundry basket, decided my hair looked just fine the way it was when I got up this morning and left for work without my daily carrot. My eyes are closing, closing, closing. I could sleep on my feet, I'm sooooooo tired. The only reason I even remember driving in this morning is because someone cut me off, triggering a panic response. That little squirt of adrenalin and cortisol is fading away and so am I. All I really want to do is sleep, sleep, sleep.