Zoloft Withdrawal

I have just had one of the most horrible side effects from stopping my Zoloft cold turkey. I had been on Zoloft for 5.5 months at 100 mg for major depression. I wanted to see how I felt without the drug, so I stopped completely two days ago. I had two episodes of horrific nightmares. I actually just woke up from one of the nightmare episodes, and it was horrible. It's like I started to visually, orally, and tactilely hallucinate during the dream, but I could not wake up. And the whole time it was happening, I was so trying to go to my bathroom and take 1/2 of my Zoloft pill, but I could not wake up. These were some of my hallucinations during my last nightmare:

(1) I was in my bathroom taking off my upper retainer for my teeth, and everytime I took it out, it somehow was still back in my mouth, and so I spent like fifty times taking it off and then seeing it back on again.

(2) I have a window in my bedroom, and there is a fountain outside. I heard a man's voice, as if he was sitting in the fountain, and when I looked from my window, he was inside of it.

(3) The worst of them all is when my eyes started to periodically burn during my nightmares, and I couldn't see. The burning really hurt, and I was so afraid that I was blind.

The worst part of it all is that at times during the nightmare, I knew this was most likely caused because of my cold turkey Zoloft withdrawal, and I could not do anything about it.

So, when I woke up, I went immediately to my bathroom and took 50 mg of Zoloft to begin tapering off. I hope this helps!

Just an update on my withdrawal from Zoloft. It has helped enormously to taper down to 50 mg/day. I still do have some hallucinatory dreams that I think are a result of the withdrawal, but they are very mild compared to the ones I had when I tried to quit cold turkey. I think tomorrow I am going to try and get away with tapering down to 25 mg/day and see what happens.

I did it. I am off all of my Zoloft and feeling great about it! Good luck to anyone else out there who is trying to get off of a psychiatric drug.

Hey that is why they tell you to taper off... Otherwise, all heck breaks loose...been there!!!

TJ