I’m a guy in my mid-40s living in western Europe who around October 2022, with no prior history of depression or other mental illness, began having constant racing thoughts about horrible und unspeakable things that felt very real and imminent despite being objectively highly unreasonable. I suspect it was a protracted period of long stressful work days and insufficient sleep that caused this but to this day I don't know for sure.

 

The racing thoughts continued practically nonstop for several months. It was like a never-ending cortisol rush. There was nothing I could do to calm down, and by December it felt like it had clearly transitioned into depression with the telltale symptoms of low mood and inability to experience genuine human emotion. Taking time away from work unfortunately didn't help, and I spent my days trying to figure out how to make it to bedtime because sleep was my only reprieve.

 

By January I began to feel dizzy like I was floating three inches outside of my body and I felt like I was observing my own interactions rather than partaking in them. I later came to realize this was disassociation, derealization, and depersonalization. I began seeing a number of doctors, neurologists, and other specialists but none could find anything wrong with me in blood tests, physical exams, and brain scans. All of them strongly recommended that I begin taking psychiatric medication.

 

By March I was having serious trouble sleeping, namely early awakening around 3am and unable to fall back asleep. After a few weeks of this I was becoming increasingly desperate and checked myself into an inpatient psychiatric clinic, not seeing any other viable option given how long this had been going on. I had also lost a significant amount of weight such that people were frequently telling me they were concerned about my health and that I looked unwell.

 

Alongside some therapy and other coping sessions, the clinic focused heavily on recovery via medication, and put me on Olanzapine (generic Zyprexa) and Sertraline (generic Zoloft). I never got the relief I was hoping for even after waiting six weeks and so the clinic doctors upped my doses, and when that didn't work (and the depression was getting even worse), they put me on Venlafaxine (generic Effexor), eventually upping the dose to 225mg.

 

After two months at the inpatient clinic and feeling no better, I decided to check out in May and try to get on with my life as best I can while staying on the medication. By early July I was feeling worse than ever and often physically ill. I decided to get off the medication because it clearly wasn’t helping.

 

The psychiatrist warned about the dangers of being unmedicated but added that if I’m going to get off them then I should taper off over a period of two weeks, consisting of a drop to 150mg and then to 75mg before quitting. In my ignorance at the time I thought I’d be extra careful and add another week of 37.5mg, which the psychiatrist claimed was unnecessary.

 

Once I began the taper I started feeling much better and this continued with each step downward, and my taper completed in mid/late July. I had a few days of brain zaps, which were triggered by sudden eye movements to the side, but they were not painful. Overall, I was feeling much better and had a positive outlook on life for the first time in nearly a year.

 

However, about three weeks after that in early/mid-August I began experiencing a very unpleasant type of unwell feeling, which I described as a chemical nausea at the time. After conducting a large amount of internet research I came across the SA forum as well as the few doctors talking about the real dangers of psychiatric medication and the risks of coming off too quickly. It was then that I realized I had walked off a cliff with my taper despite thinking I had gone slowly. And it was only then that I learned about the need for hyperbolic tapering.

 

At this point I paid for a telephone consultation with a psychiatrist knowledgeable about this topic and was given the choice of sticking it out and or trying to reinstate a small amount of the drug, stabilizing, and then slowly tapering off. The discomfort was just too great so I decided to reinstate 2mg of Venlafaxine, and it initially felt like it was helping, but within two or three days I could no longer sleep at all. This caused me to go off the drug again and sure enough the discomfort came right back.

 

I went back and forth with this, even adding a small amount of Mirtazapine for sleep, and I was getting very desperate with frequent passive suicidal thoughts. I leaned on all the resources I had, including friends, family, crisis hotlines, fellow SA forum sufferers like Luke as well as natural and religious healers. All of these things were ultimately beneficial to my recovery.

 

By December I was taking OTC painkillers for relief and realized I needed to make a decision about how to move forward. I opted  to completely go off all meds for good and to never reinstate even a small dose. I felt that whatever decision I made could end up killing me if it was the wrong one. This was such a dark, gloomy period that was magnitudes worse than the original depression I had been dealing with.

 

In January 2024 I was outside walking in the dark trying to get my mind off the misery and I fell down a flight of concrete steps due to not seeing it. I had giant bruises and gashes all over and seriously injured my shoulder, and friends and family were appalled at the sight of the injuries and expressed much sympathy. In spite of this, the pain and discomfort from the brain injury I had sustained from the improper taper far outweighed the agony of the fall down the steps on the day it happened.

 

The turning point for me came around mid-February, when I started to notice that my symptoms were getting considerably more mild in both the windows and the waves, although they didn’t fully go away until about mid-April. By May 2024 I was feeling recovered and looking toward getting my life back together. Lingering symptoms were dry eyes and weight gain, although both have lessened considerably over the past year.

 

During this horrific ordeal of approximately 18 months, I felt so incredibly lost and hopeless, but here I am now feeling nearly 100% recovered with a renewed vitality and making a point of living life to its fullest.

 

My best advice to people who are suffering is to be patient and focus on the making the present as tolerable as possible by relying on all available coping mechanisms. If there’s something you can do to make your suffering 10% less bad, then make the effort to do that and don’t dwell on the fact that it won’t cure you completely or fully relieve your misery. The recovery will come in time.

Thank you so much for joining and for posting your story.

 

Stories of recovery are very valuable to people when they are having a difficult time, they were and are for me.

 

Continuing to have symptoms improve and vitality and wellbeing improve after initially "recovering" seems quite common to me.

Hey Poison Pills

 

Thanks for joining and welcome to the forum.

 

As Luke has said it's great you added your success story here. It means a lot to everyone and gives them hope for their own recovery.

 

Feel free to drop in and say hi whenever and perhaps give us an update of how you are.

 

Speak soon

 

Chippy

Thank you so much for sharing! I really needed to hear this, I hope 18 months brings full healing for me too. I have heard that month mark thrown around a lot. I'm always worried that I've reached my final healing and won't heal more and I'm stuck like this (although I've healed so so much and even had short periods of feeling fully healed). Did you ever feel that way? Did you have plateus in healing? Thank you so much for sharing and wish you the best in life.

Edited January 22Jan 22 by iwillsurvive

18 hours ago, iwillsurvive said:

Thank you so much for sharing! I really needed to hear this, I hope 18 months brings full healing for me too. I have heard that month mark thrown around a lot. I'm always worried that I've reached my final healing and won't heal more and I'm stuck like this (although I've healed so so much and even had short periods of feeling fully healed). Did you ever feel that way? Did you have plateus in healing? Thank you so much for sharing and wish you the best in life.

@iwillsurvive, I hope I get release too.  It seems many people get better at 18 months.   I'm still holding at 4.79mg.  I can't wait to get out, but I'm opt-in to stabilize first before another cut....

 

This give me hope ...

19 hours ago, iwillsurvive said:

I'm always worried that I've reached my final healing and won't heal more and I'm stuck like this (although I've healed so so much and even had short periods of feeling fully healed). Did you ever feel that way? Did you have plateus in healing?

I never had intermittent feelings of having fully healed. There were also no plateaus. For me it was months of misery before abruptly turning the corner and feeling 100% recovered two months later. My recovery seems much more rapid than most here though, and maybe it's because I was only on the meds for 3-4 months.

Hi @Poison Pills,

 

happy to read you feel recovered! Do you feel like your brain works 100% like it did before the meds ? 😊

 

Did you also experience bad head pressures ?

 

kind regards,

Sophia

Edited January 23Jan 23 by Sophia

20 minutes ago, Sophia said:

Hi @Poison Pills,

 

happy to read you feel recovered! Do you feel like your brain works 100% like it did before the meds ? 😊

 

Did you also experience bad head pressures ?

 

kind regards,

Sophia

I had a period of six months prior to starting the meds where the depression and anxiety were taking a serious toll on my mental acuity. But now I definitely feel recovered back to where I was before that started.

Wow this is incredible, I also had 2 abrupt corners turned, it's so amazing to hear that you are back at 100%. I hope that an abrupt corner is waiting for me too once again. Thank you so much for posting this thread it's given so much hope.

On 1/20/2026 at 2:07 PM, Poison Pills said:

I’m a guy in my mid-40s living in western Europe who around October 2022, with no prior history of depression or other mental illness, began having constant racing thoughts about horrible und unspeakable things that felt very real and imminent despite being objectively highly unreasonable. I suspect it was a protracted period of long stressful work days and insufficient sleep that caused this but to this day I don't know for sure.

 

The racing thoughts continued practically nonstop for several months. It was like a never-ending cortisol rush. There was nothing I could do to calm down, and by December it felt like it had clearly transitioned into depression with the telltale symptoms of low mood and inability to experience genuine human emotion. Taking time away from work unfortunately didn't help, and I spent my days trying to figure out how to make it to bedtime because sleep was my only reprieve.

 

By January I began to feel dizzy like I was floating three inches outside of my body and I felt like I was observing my own interactions rather than partaking in them. I later came to realize this was disassociation, derealization, and depersonalization. I began seeing a number of doctors, neurologists, and other specialists but none could find anything wrong with me in blood tests, physical exams, and brain scans. All of them strongly recommended that I begin taking psychiatric medication.

 

By March I was having serious trouble sleeping, namely early awakening around 3am and unable to fall back asleep. After a few weeks of this I was becoming increasingly desperate and checked myself into an inpatient psychiatric clinic, not seeing any other viable option given how long this had been going on. I had also lost a significant amount of weight such that people were frequently telling me they were concerned about my health and that I looked unwell.

 

Alongside some therapy and other coping sessions, the clinic focused heavily on recovery via medication, and put me on Olanzapine (generic Zyprexa) and Sertraline (generic Zoloft). I never got the relief I was hoping for even after waiting six weeks and so the clinic doctors upped my doses, and when that didn't work (and the depression was getting even worse), they put me on Venlafaxine (generic Effexor), eventually upping the dose to 225mg.

 

After two months at the inpatient clinic and feeling no better, I decided to check out in May and try to get on with my life as best I can while staying on the medication. By early July I was feeling worse than ever and often physically ill. I decided to get off the medication because it clearly wasn’t helping.

 

The psychiatrist warned about the dangers of being unmedicated but added that if I’m going to get off them then I should taper off over a period of two weeks, consisting of a drop to 150mg and then to 75mg before quitting. In my ignorance at the time I thought I’d be extra careful and add another week of 37.5mg, which the psychiatrist claimed was unnecessary.

 

Once I began the taper I started feeling much better and this continued with each step downward, and my taper completed in mid/late July. I had a few days of brain zaps, which were triggered by sudden eye movements to the side, but they were not painful. Overall, I was feeling much better and had a positive outlook on life for the first time in nearly a year.

 

However, about three weeks after that in early/mid-August I began experiencing a very unpleasant type of unwell feeling, which I described as a chemical nausea at the time. After conducting a large amount of internet research I came across the SA forum as well as the few doctors talking about the real dangers of psychiatric medication and the risks of coming off too quickly. It was then that I realized I had walked off a cliff with my taper despite thinking I had gone slowly. And it was only then that I learned about the need for hyperbolic tapering.

 

At this point I paid for a telephone consultation with a psychiatrist knowledgeable about this topic and was given the choice of sticking it out and or trying to reinstate a small amount of the drug, stabilizing, and then slowly tapering off. The discomfort was just too great so I decided to reinstate 2mg of Venlafaxine, and it initially felt like it was helping, but within two or three days I could no longer sleep at all. This caused me to go off the drug again and sure enough the discomfort came right back.

 

I went back and forth with this, even adding a small amount of Mirtazapine for sleep, and I was getting very desperate with frequent passive suicidal thoughts. I leaned on all the resources I had, including friends, family, crisis hotlines, fellow SA forum sufferers like Luke as well as natural and religious healers. All of these things were ultimately beneficial to my recovery.

 

By December I was taking OTC painkillers for relief and realized I needed to make a decision about how to move forward. I opted  to completely go off all meds for good and to never reinstate even a small dose. I felt that whatever decision I made could end up killing me if it was the wrong one. This was such a dark, gloomy period that was magnitudes worse than the original depression I had been dealing with.

 

In January 2024 I was outside walking in the dark trying to get my mind off the misery and I fell down a flight of concrete steps due to not seeing it. I had giant bruises and gashes all over and seriously injured my shoulder, and friends and family were appalled at the sight of the injuries and expressed much sympathy. In spite of this, the pain and discomfort from the brain injury I had sustained from the improper taper far outweighed the agony of the fall down the steps on the day it happened.

 

The turning point for me came around mid-February, when I started to notice that my symptoms were getting considerably more mild in both the windows and the waves, although they didn’t fully go away until about mid-April. By May 2024 I was feeling recovered and looking toward getting my life back together. Lingering symptoms were dry eyes and weight gain, although both have lessened considerably over the past year.

 

During this horrific ordeal of approximately 18 months, I felt so incredibly lost and hopeless, but here I am now feeling nearly 100% recovered with a renewed vitality and making a point of living life to its fullest.

 

My best advice to people who are suffering is to be patient and focus on the making the present as tolerable as possible by relying on all available coping mechanisms. If there’s something you can do to make your suffering 10% less bad, then make the effort to do that and don’t dwell on the fact that it won’t cure you completely or fully relieve your misery. The recovery will come in time.

Wow, thank you for your story.   I'm looking forward to my own recovery as well.  It gives us hope and recovery does happens ..

@Poison Pills what where your most severe symptoms in withdrawal ? Did you also struggle with brain fog, blunting, and head pressure ?

4 hours ago, Sophia said:

@Poison Pills what where your most severe symptoms in withdrawal ? Did you also struggle with brain fog, blunting, and head pressure ?

The worst symptom was an overwhelming feeling of chemical nausea that is very difficult to describe. Later I began telling people it was like having been exposed to nerve toxins. It was an awful feeling of tense unease accompanied by racing passive suicidal thoughts and horrific depression.

 

I believed I had brain fog prior to taking the medication but it was actually just the floating feeling from disassociation, derealization, and depersonalization. Never any head pressure that I can recall.

Hey @Poison Pills, thank you for sharing. I’m so glad you made it through to the other side! 

 

I’m wondering. In the event some of those pre-med feelings ever crossed your path again. Do you have an idea of how you may address them ?

10 hours ago, TooNorth said:

Hey @Poison Pills, thank you for sharing. I’m so glad you made it through to the other side! 

 

I’m wondering. In the event some of those pre-med feelings ever crossed your path again. Do you have an idea of how you may address them ?

Thanks, and good question. At this point I'm very hopeful it was a one-time ordeal since I don't have a history of depression or mental illness and feel fully recovered now.

 

If it were to come back at full force the way it was, I would be in big trouble but I would refrain from taking any psychiatric medication. I would make full use of coping methods like taking walks, lying down, talking with supportive friends, religious readings, brain healing videos, video games, in-person meetups for depression, etc. and focusing on alleviating the misery as much as possible. Even if it's only 10%, that's worth the effort.
 

Additionally, I might try self-medicating with cold beer. I don't like the idea at all, but it helped when I needed it (before I was talked into starting the meds). Three or four 12oz (0.3l) beers over the day was usually enough to calm my nerves considerably, although never completely. This has its own risks of course, especially for people prone to alcoholism or chemical addiction generally.

 

If that wasn't working, I might consider experimenting with medical marijuana.

Edited February 6Feb 6 by Poison Pills

6 minutes ago, Poison Pills said:

Additionally, I might try self-medicating with cold beer. I don't like the idea at all, but it helped when I needed it (before I was talked into starting the meds). Three or four 12oz (0.3l) beers over the day was usually enough to calm my nerves considerably, although never completely. This has its own risks of course, especially for people prone to alcoholism or chemical addiction generally.

 

If that wasn't working, I might consider experimenting with medical marijuana.

Thanks Poison Pills. Just want to point out that neither of these things are a good idea or recommended on here for anyone reading! No judgement of course just making the point clear, 🙂 

Thanks @Poison Pills hopefully you never have to go through a sitch like that again. 
 

And I feel you on the beers lol. That seemed to get me through a major depressive episode in my mid-20’s. Led to some other issues down the road but, nothing compared to medication WD. 
 

Be well. 

7 hours ago, Chippy said:

Thanks Poison Pills. Just want to point out that neither of these things are a good idea or recommended on here for anyone reading! No judgement of course just making the point clear, 🙂 

Thanks for drawing attention to this. I definitely don't recommend that anyone else use drugs or alcohol to cope. I only meant that if my mental health were to deteriorate badly enough that I might consider it.

Edited February 6Feb 6 by Poison Pills

On 2/5/2026 at 3:31 PM, Poison Pills said:

The worst symptom was an overwhelming feeling of chemical nausea that is very difficult to describe. Later I began telling people it was like having been exposed to nerve toxins. It was an awful feeling of tense unease accompanied by racing passive suicidal thoughts and horrific depression.

 

I believed I had brain fog prior to taking the medication but it was actually just the floating feeling from disassociation, derealization, and depersonalization. Never any head pressure that I can recall.

That sounds familiar. A wave of something mental, in a way that usual nausea isn't- as you say it is some hard to describe! Unlike normal nausea there is no relief from it as there would be from vomiting. If the only benefit from this forum is knowing that others experience the same almost indescribable symptoms it is worthwhile. Thank you foe sharing, and I am so glad that that awful period of your life is behind you.