Withdrawal Symptoms

I'm looking for some coping tips during the withdrawal symptoms I am experiencing. I discontinued both my anti-depressant and mood stabilizer a week ago, as I was never able to get the combo in the right dosage to work for me. The weird thing is while I am gradually feeling back to my old self, I have these times where I experience the same side effects I had when i was taking the medicine. For instance, on Zoloft, I was full of energy and always had to be doing something. When I took Lamictal, I felt the opposite - like a zombie and had no desire to do anything. So, I've had flare ups here and there, and today I'm experiencing some kind of combination where I am really restless at work but at the same time, have no motivation or pleasure from doing my job or even normal things that I enjoy. I just want to go home and be alone and work on some project around the house. I also feel angry and irritable toward people in general, which isn't good since I work around people at my job.

Lastly, I feel really impulsive right now and don't feel like I'm able to make good decisions, which is concerning since I went on an interview a few weeks ago and could have a pending job offer. I'm worried since I'm not feeling like myself that I'll make a wrong decision (whether or not to leave my current position). In general, I'm just in a big fog and feel like I'm in some other world. Can someone give me hope that these will subside soon? I thought it was getting better until I had this flare up today.

Thanks,

Andrew

Hi Andrew! You are really brave. It's not easy to admit when things are hard or when you are struggling the way that you are. You are very smart to come here and ask for help. I think that was a great decision. I have been where you are, I understand. Fortunately, I'm on a great combo of meds that works well for me (see, ther's hope! It can happen!) you just have to hang in there and keep trying until it works out the way it should. I think it's normal for you to be up and down and restless if you are switching or coming down from medication that's been in your system for some time. Your brain got used to artificial feelings, happiness, energy or the opposite, numbness. Or all of the above! And now your brain is like Whoa! What's going on? Where's my serotonin? It's not your fault that you feel this way at all.

If you feel like you may make a life changing decision that could potentially be a bad choice....just wait. Don't panic about things that haven't happened yet. Don't stress about the job offer. Right now your life is the way it is and you are where you are supposed to be. If the offer comes and you must make a decision and are unsure, ask your friends or your family, a couple people you really trust. They can help you. Do the old fashioned Pro's VS Con's list about it, keep emotion out of it and stick with facts.

As far as being grumpy with people and wanting to be alone, I got nothing. I dislike being around people pretty much always, to the point where I stay home. I work from home, I order everything online and I don't do people-y stuff often. It's comforting for me, although it's probably not the healthiest choice... When I worked, I worked around lots of people too and had to always be "happy" and helpful and ready to spend hours upon hours helping people with high ticket purchases. Many times I didn't feel like it, I just wanted to give them a piece of my mind and go home! Unfortunately that wasn't possible. So to cheer myself up I'd do something nice for someone else. Something as simple as picking up lunch for the receptionist when she wasn't expecting it. Or really taking the time to listen to a frustrated client and trying my best to help solve their problem, even if it wasn't my job at all. Get your head right. Take a break for 15 minutes, eat something, drink some water and give yourself a pep talk. You got this. You are going to rock the rest of this day, even though you feel like crap. Then you are going to go home, make sure you get enough sleep tonight, not stress about things that are beyond your control and you'll be ok. This is temporary. You'll get through it. You rock, Andrew!

Thanks for the encouragement! That really helps motivate me to stick with it. I just wondered if I'm far enough along now that the end will be in sight soon or whether I need to backtrack and taper as is recommended. I discontinued rather abruptly because I was only taking the starting dose, so thought I wouldn't have many withdrawal symptoms, but looks like I was mistaken. It's just hard to taper even with a pill cutter once you get past cutting it in half, so I figured what the heck, I'm just gonna do it now and be done with it before I change my mind lol.

Update: this is getting really tough. It seems to be gradually getting better but then I have a manic flare up like I did last night. I was extremely angry at my wife for something little, and today I feel impulses to do things I know are wrong. Never again will I take an anti depressant! I just hope it keeps getting better because I feel like I need something to help me through this lest I do something I will regret later.

Hi Andrew,

Sorry things are rough right now. When you stopped your meds, did you tell your doctor? It's always a good idea to keep the doctor in the loop. You can let your doctor know that anti-depressants make you manic and you don't want to take them anymore. Lots of people with bipolar do this.

But if you are irritable and impulsive, it sounds like you might need some kind of medication to help you. Can you talk to your doctor about alternatives?

Hey Andrew, when you say starting dose, what do you mean, especially with lamictal? Are you referring to 25mg or 200mg? How long were you on the meds? Did you give them an adequate chance to work? (Dumping the zoloft may make perfect sense, especially without a good anti-manic-focused drug, with doc support.)
Lamictal has been one of the easier meds for me to DC (I was at 400) following the recommended tapering schedule (given it is an anticonvulsant, I was too scared to go faster), so I am hoping your symtoms will ease soon.

In case the above sounds too sanctimonious, I cold turkeyed Effexor once. That was horrible with lots of physical effects. Still makes me shudder, but I get the desire to just be done with "useless" meds. Then again, I wonder if I am always the best judge of what may be working, especially if only a little. I want drastic improvement. Why can't we have a psych drug like an antibiotic that noticeably starts to work in 24 hours?

Fingers crossed for you (one more push for you to talk to doc about whether you should DC both (at the same time) and, if yes, how to do it as painlessly as possible. If you can't get in touch this weekend, you might want to think about going back to the last dose that didn't produce the current symptoms.).

Me? I think I may be headed toward the manic side, so please forgive the verbosity

Stopping Lexapro and Lamictal (at different times) both made me feel super wonky and messed with my mood for a bit. Well the Lexapro seriously messed me up when I came off it. I even tapered off it for a week or so and it was still bad. Doing both at once seems like a lot to go through. It also seems a bit concerning that you are feeling impulsive. I would recommend talking to your psychiatrist and therapist as well if you have one. Psychiatrist could talk about the possible reaction to withdrawing and if it is safe to be off meds, and therapist could also help by checking if you are making a rational decision when it comes to your job. I hope you feel better soon.

Thanks for the helpful responses. I’m going to leave a voicemail with my pdoc so she will get it when she gets to the office on Monday. To answer your question about the dose, I was on 25mg of Zoloft and was taking the chewable tablet of Lamictal (only 5mg) - I know that’s like a baby dose, please don’t laugh. Zoloft alone makes me manic and Lamictal alone makes me lethargic, unmotivated, and anti social. Never could get the two together to work right after trying a few combinations. I’m hoping I can find a mood stabilizer or some other non anti depressant in liquid form that maybe I can tolerate better since I’m a poor metabolizer. I thought about going off all meds and that maybe the mania was anti depressant induced, but I can remember times where I experienced mild mania before I took meds. My mood would sometimes shift into a giddy state, and other times I would feel really low. But, I usually had decent control over my impulses and never did anything crazy, so that’s why I never thought about myself being bipolar. But, it could just be bipolar II or III as my pdoc suggested (she isn’t quite sure either). The Zoloft helped with depression and OCD immensely, but I felt like I was in a constant hypomanic stage.