Prozac withdrawal

Anyone have problems stopping Prozac?

How long has it been since you took your last pill and what are your symptoms?

Yesterday..no symptoms

Prozac has a very long half-life, relative to any other antidepressant. If you just started on Prozac, then the half-life is somewhere between 1 and 3 days. But, because Prozac self-inhibits, if you've been on Prozac a while, the half-life goes to 4-6 days.

In practical terms, that means that if you're taking Prozac daily, you could miss a dose and not even notice.

During withdrawal, that means that the drug actually tapers itself. Natural elimination of Prozac and its metabolites *might* go so slowly that you don't even get withdrawal symptoms.

However, prudence would suggest that you reduce the dose by halves, weekly, until you are down to 5-10 mg. Then, you can probably go cold turkey without problems. If symptoms of withdrawal do arise after that, you can take 5 mg once in a while, to make the taper even more gradual.

One potential drawback to using Prozac is that if you're switching drugs, you may have to go a long time unmedicated, to clear all the Prozac out of your body.

Best,
Lar

Usually it is not necessary to wait for Prozac to completely clear out of the body before starting a new antidepressant. In severe cases of depression this would in fact be a bad idea. However if the new drug is a tricyclic antidepressant (Elavil, Sinequan, etc.) or an MAOI (rarely used these days) than it is very important to wait several weeks for the Prozac to clear out because the long-half life increases the likelihood for potentially lethal interactions in the cases above.