[Nadja]

Hello. My life has been very much disrupted in the past week due to my fiance withdrawing from medication. He has been taking Zoloft and Xanax (6 mg a day of the latter) for over two years and just started Abilify a few months ago. I noticed an immediate change in his mood when he began Abilify--he became moody and emotionally unresponsive. Before that he was loopy, forgetful, and tired most of the time. Due to the effects these drugs have had on his life and in our relationship, he decided to stop taking them.

He didn't tell me when he was going to initiate this process, or that he started out cold turkey the Friday before last. Immediately he became incredibly irritable and downright cruel, saying he wasn't in love with me and didn't want to get married. He also said that he wanted me to go to my hometown for a while so that he could detox without me being around...apparently he knew how bad he could get. The situation confused me, yet I complied. However, I had a hard time not contacting him, and after calling him a few days into his detox, he became very angry at me and broke up with me altogether. At this point he had begun tapering off the drugs properly and was prescribed vitamins, as his vitamin D level dangerously low and his brain was not receiving enough folic acid.

I was devastated by this behavior and worried. Being two hours away and afraid of returning home, I had no clue what was actually going on. I became an emotional wreck in spite of myself. I can imagine he predicted that if I were here and acting this way, the initial withdrawal symptoms may have been much worse for him.

At any rate, he called me a few days after the breakup with no recollection of what he had done. He has apologized and I have returned home, but now I am shaken by the event. Does withdrawal really cause people to become so unlike themselves? I love him, but the grieving process has affected how I feel about us. My father wants me to leave my fiance altogether and come home, but my dad is an unstable person and living with him causes me much distress. Right now I am continuing to work through things with my fiance, but I still feel like my life is up in the air and don't know what to do.

Has anyone gone through something like this?

[Leed]

Hi ~ I'm sorry you went thru this. First, your fiance' should NOT have cold-turkeyed! He's lucky he didn't have seizures! He actually could have DIED! It's very dangerous to do that, especially with Xanax! You must taper very gradually, and I'm glad he finally did that.

Yes, you DO become very unstable when withdrawing from drugs/medications. Your body is "craving" these drugs, and strange things happen. LOL After a time, things level off, and you start getting back to normal again. It's an awful time and certainly no fun.

Try to give him the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully he'll return to normal, and things will turn out ok. If he was abusing the medications, you might want to encourage him to go to some support groups -- perhaps NA. He won't be the only one who has been caught in the trap of abusing medications. We often think that if one works, then 2 or 3 will be better.

Best of luck & God bless. Hugs, Lee