I’m down to 1.64 mg and was at 3.6mg around the beginning of this year. I don’t feel better or worse from what I can tell just steady feeling rough. I did notice an uptick in appetite this weekend but that could be from the decrease in the dosages or a switch in some of my hormone supplement routine so it’s hard to tell. Could also be I started taking Zyrtec last Thursday per the advice of my doctor.

Wouldn’t I have felt a crash or see a severe worsening of symptoms if this pace was too fast for my body?

29 minutes ago, Need to End said:

I’m down to 1.64 mg and was at 3.6mg around the beginning of this year. I don’t feel better or worse from what I can tell just steady feeling rough. I did notice an uptick in appetite this weekend but that could be from the decrease in the dosages or a switch in some of my hormone supplement routine so it’s hard to tell. Could also be I started taking Zyrtec last Thursday per the advice of my doctor.

Wouldn’t I have felt a crash or see a severe worsening of symptoms if this pace was too fast for my body?

There is often a lag time between changing a dose and the body noticing this change. Too many changes in a short period there will be lots of lag times and these accumulate. This is the rationale for going slow

3 hours ago, Need to End said:

Could also be I started taking Zyrtec last Thursday per the advice of my doctor.

We advice avoiding taking anti histimines on here, we find they can make us worse.

3 hours ago, Need to End said:

Wouldn’t I have felt a crash or see a severe worsening of symptoms if this pace was too fast for my body?

Typically yes, really only you can judge what is too fast or slow. Let your body guide you,

Ok. The anxiety and depression are heavy but they’ve been heavy so it’s hard for me to tell what’s right here

Is it possible to get back to success and find a partner after crashing like this and currently being 47?

I feel too old and I want my life back like I had it

13 hours ago, Need to End said:

Ok. The anxiety and depression are heavy but they’ve been heavy so it’s hard for me to tell what’s right here

I understand. Have you given the conversations that have been had on here about your benzos any thought?

5 hours ago, Need to End said:

Is it possible to get back to success and find a partner after crashing like this and currently being 47?

I feel too old and I want my life back like I had it

Of course 100%!!!!!!

There is plenty of life after 47! We can't know what is next for us in life, worrying about it causes anxiety in of itself.

I would start by reframing what success is! Maybe it is having a partner and financial 'sucsess' and that is fine if that is what you aim for, but I would suggest that this is a mirage anyway. Being over 40 brings with it some enlightenment I found, that life is short and there is more to it than fitting into a template set out in the media/modern culture about what a good life is. Being ok within your own skin, spending more time with your kids, time outside, painting, hiking, photography, fishing, what ever it is, is more important. But EVERYTHING is possible after 47!

@Chippy do you mean tapering down the benzo a little?

When you guys drop too fast do you see the mental side effects increase or the physical more?

15 hours ago, Need to End said:

@Chippy do you mean tapering down the benzo a little?

I mean you noted that reducing the benzo helped you a bit, so I wondered if you had given the idea of holding the AD where it is and trying a small reduction of the benzo and see how what goes? Perhaps pop over to Benzo Buddies and see what they say?

6 hours ago, Need to End said:

When you guys drop too fast do you see the mental side effects increase or the physical more?

It can be both potentially. Vary from person to person.

6 hours ago, Chippy said:

I mean you noted that reducing the benzo helped you a bit, so I wondered if you had given the idea of holding the AD where it is and trying a small reduction of the benzo and see how what goes? Perhaps pop over to Benzo Buddies and see what they say?

Hey @Chippy ,

I know you put a couple of questions out there to NTE and as you await his reply, I thought I'd share a few things. At first I wasn't sure if he had started reducing his benzo but then I noticed he had updated his signature showing he had made a 12% cut a couple weeks ago. As you noted above, he reported when he had reduced it by 25% a while back, it appeared to have helped him "a bit". I'm seeing that as what we are going on, along with his other reports that he feels it no longer helps him, to see if it plays a part by trialing a cautious taper. Like you, I think one taper at a time is best.

For a long time, he has reported feeling consistently "bad" whether tapering Prozac or holding it. The difficult question remains as to how much of what he's going through from his Prozac is WD vs paradoxical reaction. But I discovered recently that Prozac receptor occupancy decreases very slowly compared with other ADs. He's made good progress in dosage reduction, but even though he's on a very small dosage of 1.62 mg, the receptor occupancy is still pretty high at 40%. An equivalent dosage of Lexapro (.8 mg) is 21%, by comparison. The combination of its relatively high RO, its very long half-life, and the possibility that the gene test saying he's a poor metabolizer of this med is accurate, could help to explain why he's not seeing improvement yet.

I'd be interested in your thoughts on this.

This is so defeating. All this work and I’m still at 40%? Does this mean I’m still in for the worst of it?

56 minutes ago, Need to End said:

This is so defeating. All this work and I’m still at 40%? Does this mean I’m still in for the worst of it?

Not at all. Much of what you may experience moving forward will depend on how you adopt and practice coping techniques. Try not to link what you've gone through to your expectations of what may come. Tapering and coping can and should be simultaneous.

59 minutes ago, Need to End said:

This is so defeating. All this work and I’m still at 40%? Does this mean I’m still in for the worst of it?

No, I wouldn't read it like that. You have suspected that your Prozac has been paradoxical to you. You even say that in the title of this thread and mentioned how it created panic for you the first time you ever tried it. Look at this as there's still enough potency of this med that could have an adverse effect on you and by chipping away at that by slow, steady reductions, as you've been doing, you may be reducing the adverse effect more and more as you lower your dose. That's how to deal with a paradoxical med. The trick is you can't then speed up the taper a lot because that could also cause withdrawal to emerge or worsen.

Thank you. The challenge is I’m stuck in this hell daily while I’m losing more pieces of my life continuously. I’ve never felt this awful in my life not even close and it’s hell. I’m losing people I care about and things are changing.

16 hours ago, Gaucho said:

At first I wasn't sure if he had started reducing his benzo but then I noticed he had updated his signature showing he had made a 12% cut a couple weeks ago.

I had not seen this. @Need to End did it help or no difference? I would not taper both at the same time when the nervous system is so fragile.

16 hours ago, Gaucho said:

For a long time, he has reported feeling consistently "bad" whether tapering Prozac or holding it.

Yes that has been what he has said. Prozac was a bridge from Lexapro, this often doesn't go so well, and there have been some abrupt changes of drugs in his history, so much of what he is going through may well be a kindled nervous system rather than an adverse reaction. It could be that he never stablised on the dose of prozac after the switch rather than the dose is upsetting him per se.

17 hours ago, Gaucho said:

But I discovered recently that Prozac receptor occupancy decreases very slowly compared with other ADs. He's made good progress in dosage reduction, but even though he's on a very small dosage of 1.62 mg, the receptor occupancy is still pretty high at 40%. An equivalent dosage of Lexapro (.8 mg) is 21%, by comparison.

The first thing to note about WD, is we don't know much about it, nothing should be assumed, everyone is different.

What is seen in the community is AD reactions are dose sensitive not RO sensitive, but obviously this is a generalised observation not out and out fact, they could be affected by RO but I suspect not so much.

17 hours ago, Gaucho said:

The combination of its relatively high RO, its very long half-life, and the possibility that the gene test saying he's a poor metabolizer of this med is accurate, could help to explain why he's not seeing improvement yet.

Some of this could play into how he feels for sure. I suspect he has a very dysfunctional nervous system at this point, which time is healing. He has choosen to taper carefully and seems to being doing this successfully as he notes not feeling and worse as a result of his taper. Once off of this and the benzo hopefully his system can complete the healing process it has already started, unhindered.

@Need to End Im sorry for all your suffering, my heart goes out to you, hold on tight, things won't always be this way.

Hey @Chippy what is RO?

21 minutes ago, Dnepr1234 said:

Hey @Chippy what is RO?

RO = receptor occupancy. Chippy can probably explain this better, but my understanding is that it’s basically a measure of how much the drug is binding to its target receptors. It’s used as the basis for hyperbolic tapering because ADs and other psych drugs often have relatively high RO even at “low” doses.

If I end up tapering “too fast from 1.62 to 0 - what is my biggest risk - worse symptoms for a while?

5 hours ago, Need to End said:

If I end up tapering “too fast from 1.62 to 0 - what is my biggest risk - worse symptoms for a while?

What is 'too fast' varies from person to person. My advice is to keep going very slowly looking out for any worsening and holding if you get it.

For RO you can google sert occupancy of Prozac and in the first or second result there’s an article that shows you the hyperbolic chart. It explains a ton about withdrawal when you see how this works. You can search for this chart for any drug. It’s interesting to learn as this is the basis for tapering protocol these days.

Hi @Need to End Taking this to the forum so others can chime in. When you're in WD, its very typical to assume nothing in your life will ever work out and you'll never be happy again. I think we've all experienced it at some period. Yes, life happens and we have negative experiences while we're trying to recover, but WD magnifies them to make them 10 times worse than they are. No one is too old or has lost the ability to get their lives back. But hanging onto negative thought habits makes things worse and prolongs recovery. If you work on your coping skills, you'll find more clarity when you have to deal with real-life events.

After 2 weeks I dropped the klonopin down again another .125mg. I’m at 1.6mg on Prozac. I felt calm last night. Still always the underlying stuff but it was a little better last night. There’s several reasons that could be though.

Edited June 27Jun 27 by Need to End

2 hours ago, Need to End said:

After 2 weeks I dropped the klonopin down again another .125mg. I’m at 1.6mg on Prozac. I felt calm last night. Still always the j deleting stuff but it was a little better last night. There’s several reasons that could be though.

That's great that you felt calm last night, no matter what accounted for that. I see that you're tapering down both meds. I'm kind of concerned you may be reducing a little fast with the Klonopin. It's up to you, of course, but in your shoes, I'd do a maximum reduction of 10% (yours is 14% now), maybe a tad lower, like 8-9%, seeing that you're tapering 2 meds. But holding your previous dose for 2 weeks sounds reasonable. Best to let any symptoms that may come up while tapering guide you along the way and holding longer when necessary.