Well here we go I guess. Buckle up cause its a journey. 

 

it’s been a long road up to this point. I’m basically a year in to what I call the worst and most confusing experience of my life. Up until last year, that title belonged to a time when I was 17 and had a really adverse reaction to some weed that took 18 months to reverse itself. But reverse itself it did, with a lot of willpower and no drugs. 
 

I thought that experience had made me mentally pretty bulletproof. I never touched weed or any other drugs again. I viewed it as the most formative experience of my young life, and it helped shape the kind of compassionate, determined, fun loving, strong and disciplined person I became. 

I built the most amazing life from there out. 5 years down the road i had sailed around the world, built two homes, started a business, and met my girlfriend. 5 years after that and I had made that girlfriend my wife. We travelled, loved each other amazingly, adopted a big old shepherd dog, owned the business that we built together (her as the designer and myself as the project manager for multimillion dollar custom homebuilds). A few years after that and we welcomed a daughter into the world. Life was, how can i put it, the best its ever been. Surfing, rock climbing, windsurfing, having a newborn, having a bunch of jobs lined up to comfortably put lots of money in the bank with low stress, it was great. 
 

Enter the prince of darkness

 

I’ll back up here a little bit. About 5 or 6 years prior i had started taking 5-htp and found it was greatly effective in helping me with work stress. I thought nothing of the “don’t take for more than 2 weeks unless supervised by a doctor” —yeah well, whatever, we all know supplements arent drugs— right? I took it every morning with my magnesium and omega. For 5 years. 

So now my daughter is three months old, and i ran out of 5-htp three weeks prior and forgot to get more. Didn’t think much of it. Now some symptoms start showing up. I’ll spare the misery of it as you all know it well. DP, vertigo, nausea, migraine. Nothing super major but I wouldnt expect super major with something that basically replaces an enzyme and isnt a full on drug. 
 

Anyways i have completely forgotten about 5HTP and have no idea what’s going on. Work stress? Vestibular migraine? Eye issues? The gambit. After three weeks I talked to my doctor. He says “hey we should run some tests, an MRI and rule out some things like MS, etc.”

I kinda broke down. Had a freak out. “I can’t have MS, I have a baby, i wanna see her grow up, etc” not really realizing that the fear and paranoia part was probably 5htp related (it took me a year, more about that later) 

Anyways i call a buddy who’s an ER doc just to chat about things cause i’m pretty fired up. He’s like “hey well if it’s MS we usually just run a quick course of prednisone and that stomps down the flare”

I’m convinced at this point I have MS cause I have trouble walking, twitches, focal myoclonus, all that good stuff. So i grab a course of pred. 50mg for 5 days

 

I made it three days before my body and brain gave out and I ended up in the ER. I lost use of my legs for several hours. I blacked out sitting up. Couldnt formulate thoughts or words. All hell broke fully loose. 
 

I was convinced that it would go away, that the prednisone adverse reaction was just a temporary thing. Temporary is relative I guess. After 4 months of what i now know to be a really really rough post acute withdrawal (which was triggered by the pred, or something along those lines) of things like (all of these 24/7) complete insomnia, brain zaps, vertigo spells, abject terror at all times, inability to formulate words from thoughts, inability to read, complete disaster of my digestive system, rage, hopelessness, burning skin, bleeding nose, body temperature swings, tremor, myoclonus of the hands, etc, i decided to start throwing things at the wall to see what stuck. I might seem like i’m not spending much time here but it was basically everything that you could list symptom wise. It was horrendous. Suicide plan in place, can’t do this type of horrendous. And i’ve been through massive physical trauma, injuries from sports, traumatic brain injury, fought back from all of that and NOTHING compares to this. Not even close. Fuck, it doesn’t even skim the surface. So pat yourselves on the back, from someone who’s broken their body and brain before that this is the worst. 
 

i was still convinced this was 100% prednisone that had somehow triggered an underlying medical condition or something despite me being the most fit, healthy, happy person I knew. Like seriously fit. Rock climbing at a near professional level, surfing three times a week minimum, mountain biking enduro, windsurfing, resting heart rate of 50bpm, six pack, never seeing the inside of a gym, just absolute healthy eating and living. Somehow i was convinced this was my own system and thoughts and etc. So i tried, in no certain order, and in no certain amount of time (sometimes a week, sometimes a couple days, they all gave me horrific adverse reactions at the worst and zero positives at the best)

-seroquel

-ambien

-lyrica

-atenolol

-propranolol

-prazosin

-trazodone

-buspirone

 

and then finally, at the ragged edge of insanity, I checked into the psycho ward and they hit me with a clonazepam. 
 

boom. 75% improvement. So much came back. Still missing memory and some things like coordination but the horrific cloud of black symptoms like twitching and darkness was gone. I was a functioning human. I talked with the head psychiatrist in our area and to his credit, after I explained everything I knew (leaving out the 5htp at this point because i still forgot about it) his words were 

“honestly, I can’t say I know what‘s wrong with you with the information you gave me. Any doctor that says they do, they’re lying. In Psychiatry it’s a lot of guessing and hoping things work. We generally are fishing around in a black box not knowing how the things we’re trying to treat actually work, we just know how a certain drug MOST USUALLY effects people. It‘s a crapshoot. I can, however, see that you’re suffering greatly from something we aren't sure about. I believe you. I don’t think it’s just in your mind. I think you’ll get to the bottom of it, and you need some breathing room to do it, because we arent going to be able to, so I’m going to recommend to your GP to prescribe a low dose of benzos and I want you to do as much research as you can while they work. I want you to be a dad as much as you can while at the same time figuring this out.”

 

that hit me so hard. Finally the most senior doctor of the brain telling me (after everyone else has been saying “it’s just stress, it’s just anxiety” all that stuff) that he doesnt believe it was that. He believes something happened. It wasnt all in my head. It was real. 
 

I met with my GP the next week. He acquiesced and prescribed 0.5mg of clonazepam once daily. He said to take it for a week and then we’ll chat

 

i had a pretty great week. At least, way way better than any i’d had since my AD to the pred. I went back in and asked if it was reasonable to try going down on the benzo as low as I could and see where the line was.
 

He ended up talking me into trying out Escitalopram. Started at 2.5, then 5, then 10mg. Initially i didn’t feel great. But it seemed to help almost right away (couple weeks) and I reduced the benzo to 0.25mg per day. At this point I was thinking “ok this is alright, i can ride this out and reduce the benzo to zero. So i did. Over about three days after taking it for a month. Big mistake. Hell set in again. I reinstated almost immediately and figured, ok, then i will micro taper this thing. I started reducing by a half percent a day. Over the next few months i felt better and better and was able to reduce the benzo down to 0.18mg. That was when i hit a bit of a wall.
 

I was doing weekly appointments with my GP at this point and he suggested that I wait it out. So i agreed, and then immediately decided to decrease the SSRI.
 

i went from 10mg to 7.5mg, which is a 5% SERT occupancy reduction. I felt fine. Little more energy, little less like a zombie. Decided that I must be getting better and didnt need a high dose. Reduced to 5mg, which is a 10% SERT occupancy reduction. (Fully aware of the hyperbolic nature of psych drugs). And that went great….. for 3.5 weeks. Then, little bits of hell came back. Little bit by bit. But i recognized them. They were identical to what happened at the very beginning. It was puzzling. “Maybe this is all a serotonin thing” i began to think. It must be explainable somehow. The benzo steps down felt bad, but not specifically bad like this. This was on-the-dot bad just like before the prednisone. 
 

Anyways, the research took a new route, one that led me to survivingantidepressants. But i had still never taken an ssri. I was combing posts and rather quickly came upon 5-htp. Suddenly it all clicked into place. I ripped through my rather extensive supplement drawer (i’d been trying everything) and pulled out a basically empty bottle of 5-HTP from a year ago. Mother****er. I searched for 5htp withdrawal. Boom. Got a bunch of people saying it was horrendous. A bunch saying it was absolutely nothing, as well. Fair enough. Most things are a spectrum. 
 

So i brought it up with my doctor. Told him that I remembered a few weeks before this started that I had been taking this stuff for years and went off it cold turkey. 
 

his words:

 

”ah shit. I can’t tell you whether or not that actually was the cause of the start of this, but I can tell you that i’ve had at least three people have serious and bad reactions to 5-htp, including one of my patients that got serotonin syndrome from it. so even though it’s not supposed to be able to increase serotonin directly, because it’s just an amino acid, i’ve seen it do damage to certain people, in my practice”

 

and there we have it. It also happens to be unregulated so you really don’t know what you’re actually getting. The plant extract, or perhaps more? Perhaps more than the 100mg in the pill. 
 

All appearances are that I am one of the unlucky people who have a very sensitive serotonin system, and 5 years of basically throwing an excessive amount of raw material into the middle of an assembly line probably disrupted the process of natural synthesis. Tryptophan-5htp-serotonin. My body probably stopped looking for the Tryptophan or shit down the tryptophan-5htp stage of the process with a constant dietary supply of 5-htp. 
 

Anyways, how it stands now is I’m currently on 5mg of Escitalopram, and .18mg of clonazepam, with a half a benadryl to sleep

 

i’m working full time building homes and taking care of my now 16 month old daughter. She’s the light of my world. I am

unfit, and still suffering from probably 30% of the symptom intensity. That being said, I am pushing through it. Staying moving. My family, my wife, my daughter, they deserve it. Nothing less. I would happily lay my life down and die for them, so as my wife says, “do the harder thing and live for us”

 

i’m tapering the escitalopram slowly. The benzos never seemed a problem to taper, just s few days of the withdrawals and then settling out. But they do make it easier to deal with the other symptoms. 
 

Every time i drop the dose of the ssri (which i have done in 5 and 10% sert occupancy jumps) ie 20mg, 10mg, 7.5mg, 5mg, then it would be 3.5 mg, something like 2.5 mg, then 2, then 1.75, etc, i have two weeks of feeling great, two weeks of meh, and then the withdrawal hits. 
 

first question (wow if you’ve made it this far, round of applause) do i want to stick with the 10% jumps and wait out the shitty feelings, or go with a 5% jump and maybe have less shitty. Or do a brassmonkey style slide, or something else?

 

And of course, any encouragement is amazing. Love y’all. You’ve already helped more than I could imagine back on the other site, even though i discovered it the day that it went read-only. 

cheers to y’all from the land of tall trees, cold seas, beach fires and sand fleas. 
may your healing be steady, when your mind and body are ready. 

 

 

 

 

Hi @Talltreescoldseas

 

Welcome to the forum!

 

This is a volunteer-run, community forum aimed at helping those who are tapering and/or experiencing difficulties with psychiatric medications and withdrawl syndrome. We are not medical professionals and cannot offer medical advice. We simply offer support and opinions which you could use as talking points with a medical provider knowledgeable in withdrawing off psychiatric medications.

 

Please familiarise yourself with the forum rules and the disclaimer located here: Guidelines

 

Please make sure your signature is kept up to date with your drug history. This will allow members to see some basic information about your drug history and situation so that they may help you best. Information on how to do this is located in the FAQs section above, but here is a direct link: Update Signature

Once this is done, future posts made by you will have this signature turned on by default. For this reason please keep it clear but condensed as possible.

I'm so sorry to read about the tough time you've had recently you will find plenty of support here for sure.

 

4 hours ago, Talltreescoldseas said:

Buckle up cause its a journey. 

 

Thank you for the post I did 'buckle up' it was a good read. I can see you have a great life and a lot going for you. Im a fellow builder before all this and share your passion there and your love of travel and being outdoors! 🙂

 

I think you have worked out what has happened to you. You have clearly been educating yourself on how all this works!

 

Extended periods of 5-HTP use upset your nervous system and led you down the path of psychiatric meds to treat the symptoms. It was lucky you met some professionals who recognised this but unfortunately, it still let you to being on two drugs today.

 

Could I get you to redo your signature with more detail of each dose change please? In particular the last year or so.

 

Write it like this:

01 Jan 2025 Escitalopram 10mg

02 Feb 2025 Escitalopram 7.5mg

and so on

 

Its so helpful for us to see where you are at.....

 

It looks like you are tapering a bit quick from what I can see from above. Escitalopram is very strong at the lower doses, which I think you have worked out, and so much more careful reductions are needed than what I can see. As I said if you could redo your signature as I laid out that would be very helpful.

 

I'll await your update on this 🙂 

 

In the mean time this is what I would do if I were you:

 

-Stay Hydrated 

 

-Eat a good clean whole food diet, avoiding processed foods and sugars.

 

-Stay away from caffeine, alcohol and antihistamines and any other psychoactive substances.

 

Supplements are to be avoided initially, as they often irritate our nervous systems. Try to get your nutrition through food.

 

Down the line, you may wish to introduce Fish Oil and Magnesium. Those who can tolerate them have found them calming to the nervous system. Be careful try one at a time and start low and see how you get on should you choose to try them.

 

A daily walk is very important as much as you can manage, if you can manage it. Gets you your fresh air and Vitamin D does wonders for your mind!

 

You are very welcome here and I hope you find the site supportive.

 

Speak soon

 

Chippy

Thanks Chippy. (Fellow chippy)

 

I’ll update the sig when i have time. 
 

I see you say to avoid antihistamines as well, unfortunately the benadryl is the only thing that lets me sleep. For me it seems that lack of sleep greatly exacerbates everything and leaves me somewhat unfunctional. Any advice there? I gotta stay functional for my family, there’s really no choice at this point

 

cheers

 

j

2 hours ago, Talltreescoldseas said:

Thanks Chippy. (Fellow chippy)

🤣

 

2 hours ago, Talltreescoldseas said:

I’ll update the sig when i have time. 

No hurry I know you’re a busy man. 
 

2 hours ago, Talltreescoldseas said:

see you say to avoid antihistamines as well, unfortunately the benadryl is the only thing that lets me sleep. For me it seems that lack of sleep greatly exacerbates everything and leaves me somewhat unfunctional. Any advice there? I gotta stay functional for my family, there’s really no choice at this point

Yes its best to avoid them however it’s always your choice what you do. I suspect for me they caused me problems and I didn’t find them sedating anymore anyway.
 

Sleep is a complex subject we have a post here about it which you mind find useful. 

Sleep in WD

Another key skill which aids in wd (and with sleep imo) is radical acceptance. 
 

Acceptance is key
 

I hope you have a good weekend and are not working it!

 

Chippy

Welcome and thank you for your story. Prednisone did me in, as well. I CANNOT take steroids. 

And I tapered off benzosl. You can do it.

 

So glad you found this site.  Understanding helps lessen my suffering.  We are not sick.  We are injured by meds. 

 

Hugs.

welcome to the site and thank you for posting your story, it was a very interesting read. i like to come on this site occasionally to read posts even at times when im not posting updates. i hope the best for you on your journey

Edited February 27Feb 27 by Some0n3

11 hours ago, Chippy said:

🤣

 

No hurry I know you’re a busy man. 
 

Yes its best to avoid them however it’s always your choice what you do. I suspect for me they caused me problems and I didn’t find them sedating anymore anyway.
 

Sleep is a complex subject we have a post here about it which you mind find useful. 

Sleep in WD

Another key skill which aids in wd (and with sleep imo) is radical acceptance. 
 

Acceptance is key
 

I hope you have a good weekend and are not working it!

 

Chippy

Thanks dude. Of course i’m working it haha. I feel like we get the “all the skills, none of the pay” as woodworkers. This weekend is a kitchen install. 
 

roger that about sleep. I’ve been slowly reducing the dosage of it over the last 6mo cause yeah, I agree, dont want to rely on it. 

9 hours ago, mars said:

Welcome and thank you for your story. Prednisone did me in, as well. I CANNOT take steroids. 

And I tapered off benzosl. You can do it.

 

So glad you found this site.  Understanding helps lessen my suffering.  We are not sick.  We are injured by meds. 

 

Hugs.

Thanks for the reply. Good to hear people’s stories about pred. I thought I was the only one and that it damaged me irreversibly. Of course, I think everyone thinks that when they fall into this…

19 minutes ago, Talltreescoldseas said:

Thanks dude. Of course i’m working it haha. I feel like we get the “all the skills, none of the pay” as woodworkers. This weekend is a kitchen install. 

I knew you would be. Can’t put it down can you! I relate 🤣

Yeah and 1000s invested in tools, when sparkles don’t even own a broom apparently!

 

Sounds like a plan. Sleep is a tricky one as I said. The body knows how to do it. If you can keep your head out the way of it, in time it will improve. It’s accepting that you will sleep as much as you need and that when you don’t it’s the drug harm that’s caused it, you know don’t panic or try hard as it doesn’t help. 
Unfortunately sleep seems to take the longest to heal. No idea why but it does get better with time. 

Hey @Talltreescoldseas glad you found the site. I live in Victoria BC as well.

Reading through your intro, a few things I noticed….first, only taper one drug at a time. This is so important so if there is a flare up of symptoms, you know exactly what is causing it. So best to focus on the benzo, Benadryl or escitalopram.

Also when tapering, it is suggested to do no more than a 10% reduction off your current dose. Especially as you get to the lower doses, it gets harder and the holds may need to be longer than 28 days. Sometimes it can take a few months for all the symptoms to get worked through, so some will take an extra hold at various points as well. 
 

Were you at the Jubilee psych ward? My doctor says psychiatry in Canada is a sh*t show. Glad there a few doctors here that get it.
 

On 2/26/2026 at 8:49 PM, Talltreescoldseas said:

from the land of tall trees, cold seas, beach fires and sand fleas. 

Did you watch Sea Wolves on Netflix? We live on such a beautiful island, ❤️🙏

Edited February 28Feb 28 by LostinCanada

10 hours ago, LostinCanada said:

Hey @Talltreescoldseas glad you found the site. I live in Victoria BC as well.

Reading through your intro, a few things I noticed….first, only taper one drug at a time. This is so important so if there is a flare up of symptoms, you know exactly what is causing it. So best to focus on the benzo, Benadryl or escitalopram.

Also when tapering, it is suggested to do no more than a 10% reduction off your current dose. Especially as you get to the lower doses, it gets harder and the holds may need to be longer than 28 days. Sometimes it can take a few months for all the symptoms to get worked through, so some will take an extra hold at various points as well. 
 

Were you at the Jubilee psych ward? My doctor says psychiatry in Canada is a sh*t show. Glad there a few doctors here that get it.
 

Did you watch Sea Wolves on Netflix? We live on such a beautiful island, ❤️🙏

Hey! I do live in vic. Perhaps send me a message if you want to reach out or anything! 
 

anyways the advice is helpful. I’m gonna rethink the taper speed I believe. 
 

and yes. That was where i was! I managed to talk to A.S. (can shoot you his full name in a dm If you’re curious) he’s probably the most well regarded psychiatrist in Vic, according to a lot of the counsellors and doctors that i’d spoken to and really lucked out that he was on shift when i was in there. Absolutely awesome compassionate and super knowledgeable human being 

 

one of his quotes was “i tend to judge drugs based on their effect on individuals, and not on what the literature says they do, or are supposed to do, because I believe the patient and its my job to help”

 

like holy hell you DO get it!!!

 

And I saw sea wolves but havent gotten around to it yet. I have a dog that I love with all my heart who’s pretty wolf like and seeing wolves struggle at all or anything like that breaks my fragile heart at the moment so ive put off watching it for fear of that hahaha

 

cheers

10 hours ago, Chippy said:

I knew you would be. Can’t put it down can you! I relate 🤣

Yeah and 1000s invested in tools, when sparkles don’t even own a broom apparently!

 

Sounds like a plan. Sleep is a tricky one as I said. The body knows how to do it. If you can keep your head out the way of it, in time it will improve. It’s accepting that you will sleep as much as you need and that when you don’t it’s the drug harm that’s caused it, you know don’t panic or try hard as it doesn’t help. 
Unfortunately sleep seems to take the longest to heal. No idea why but it does get better with time. 

Thanks brother! Will take it under advisement forsure. 
 

yeah true that. Finally found a sparky that owns a broom and never letting him go!!

6 minutes ago, Talltreescoldseas said:

aw sea wolves but havent gotten around to it yet. I have a dog that I love with all my heart who’s pretty wolf like and seeing wolves struggle at all or anything like that breaks my fragile heart at the moment so ive put off watching it for fear of that hahaha

The documentary is really positive...not like a lot of nature shows that glorify the struggles. Spoiler alert... nothing bad happens to any wolves. 😊😊😊

We used to live in Calgary and had a couple sled dogs and we used to do dog sledding with friends that had dogs. I loved my malamute and husky. They were our core.

11 minutes ago, Talltreescoldseas said:

managed to talk to A.S. (can shoot you his full name in a dm If you’re curious)

I am..I'll pm you.

13 minutes ago, Talltreescoldseas said:

gonna rethink the taper speed I believe. 

Good....I am dealing with protracted withdrawal despite a reinstatement. I wish I knew then what I know now. 

You sound like you are doing well... don't rock the boat...the CNS needs to be respected and treated gently. ❤️🙏

On 2/27/2026 at 4:49 AM, Talltreescoldseas said:

first question (wow if you’ve made it this far, round of applause) do i want to stick with the 10% jumps and wait out the shitty feelings, or go with a 5% jump and maybe have less shitty. Or do a brassmonkey style slide, or something else?

 

IF you can tolerate being on the drugs and you stabilise between dose drops (ie. you're not reacting significantly adversely to being on the medication generally), then I would slow it down and attempt to taper in a way that does not introduce more symptoms and feeling bad.

 

It might also get harder the further you go.

 

An ideal taper is one that is manageable and happens in the background whilst you live life relatively symptom-free. It's not a race.

 

In my opinion the only reason to rush one is if you absolutely don't tolerate being on the medications at all. You're functional, I'd prioritise keeping it that way, if I were you. I've experienced the consequences of going too quickly.

Hey all

 

I stepped down to 5mg from 7.5 about jan 15th. Had three great weeks as expected and then things went a bit downhill. Some symptoms came back (myclonus in my right hand and parasthesia in the backs of my legs) and that i hadn’t experienced since i stabilized on 10mg after the rough 4 months of acute. 
 

i know it was a bit much of a drop in dose (even though only 10 sert occupancy percentage) but i was hoping to stabilize out on this dose before dropping by a more reasonable and recommended dose interval. 
 

i’m wondering what the advice would be. Go back up a little and stabilize, or wait and stabilize. I’m not sure how long I should wait to see if these resolve again. 

cheers y’all

 

J

Edited March 7Mar 7 by Talltreescoldseas

7 hours ago, Talltreescoldseas said:

Hey all

 

I stepped down to 5mg from 7.5 about jan 15th. Had three great weeks as expected and then things went a bit downhill. Some symptoms came back (myclonus in my right hand and parasthesia in the backs of my legs) and that i hadn’t experienced since i stabilized on 10mg after the rough 4 months of acute. 
 

i know it was a bit much of a drop in dose (even though only 10 sert occupancy percentage) but i was hoping to stabilize out on this dose before dropping by a more reasonable and recommended dose interval. 
 

i’m wondering what the advice would be. Go back up a little and stabilize, or wait and stabilize. I’m not sure how long I should wait to see if these resolve again. 

cheers y’all

 

J

Hi mate

 

Do you have any other wd symptoms?

 

How would you rate the current severity out of 10? 10 being the worse?

24 minutes ago, Chippy said:

Hi mate

 

Do you have any other wd symptoms?

 

How would you rate the current severity out of 10? 10 being the worse?

Hey buddy

 

gonna sound like a b**ch here

 

Other than the sleeplessness that i’ve had all along, just a little more restlessness/akathasia and what i said above

 

so no, it’s not untenable. I’m just worried about triggering symptoms and then not having them go away. I dunno. I’m not new to suffering but i’m new to suffering in the right way

2 hours ago, Talltreescoldseas said:

Hey buddy

 

gonna sound like a b**ch here

 

Other than the sleeplessness that i’ve had all along, just a little more restlessness/akathasia and what i said above

 

so no, it’s not untenable. I’m just worried about triggering symptoms and then not having them go away. I dunno. I’m not new to suffering but i’m new to suffering in the right way

Your attempted switch to Zoloft wasn’t long before this cut. Your nervous system is probably not happy with you. 
 

All things considered sounds like you’re not too bad. 
 

In my opinion you probably need to hang here and wait it out. If you do updose id not go the whole way. It’s a 50% increase. I’d just try 0.5mg and see if it helps and hold there for 2 weeks, then assess how you are. Not a science this. Listen to your body. It knows best. 

If it's not unbearable, I would recommend staying where you are until it settles down.

 

If it is bearable, you've had a lucky escape- you were experiencing symptoms after larger drops and the discussion being had was whether future drops should be 10% or 5%.

 

You've then dropped by a 1/3 or 33% in one go.

 

 

The lower dose you're at, the more significant even small drops can be. We're here to help and you don't need to listen to anyone here, but equally there's not a lot else harmed people on an internet forum can do if they outline what has harmed them and how to avoid ending up like them and then you go and do it anyway.

 

As I said, we're happy to give our thoughts on your current situation but the current situation exists because you do not tolerate larger drops well, and there is precedent for tolerating drops becoming harder and harder the lower the dose so you may want to consider that moving forwards.

 

I speak from experience when I say that going too fast and ending up with severe symptoms for years is not worth it.

Thanks brothers

 

yeah fair. I might have misunderstood and went for a 10% sert reduction instead of 10% of the last dose. Will hold, and see how she goes. 
 

Roger about updosing chippy, if it gets weird i’ll try maybe a little bit

I will add, don't get too caught up on the SERT occupancy when reducing. It is only one part of the equation that has been studied. There are numerous receptors, transmitters and enzymes that are affected and all come into play. Your body will set the pace. ❤️🙏

Edited March 8Mar 8 by LostinCanada

6 hours ago, LostinCanada said:

I will add, don't get too caught up on the SERT occupancy when reducing. It is only one part of the equation that has been studied. There are numerous receptors, transmitters and enzymes that are affected and all come into play. Your body will set the pace. ❤️🙏

Right right right. That checks out. Thanks for that

Hey All wise people

 

it’s been 7 weeks since i went to 5mg from 7.5 escitalopram, and about 9 weeks since a little misguided zoloft adventure. 
 

i know now that the 7.5 to 5 drop was too large all at once, and it’s been a bit rocky forsure. Things have been wavy, and today’s probably the worst its been yet. 
 

i’m wondering on the wisdom of going back up to an intermediate dose and resuming the taper from there. 
 

i know its a bit of a “whatever you think you want, no one can tell you what works” but i guess i’d like to see if that is something worth trying

28 minutes ago, Talltreescoldseas said:

been 7 weeks since i went to 5mg from 7.5 escitalopram, and about 9 weeks since a little misguided zoloft adventure. 

October you were at 10 mg…if you were doing a 10% monthly taper…it would look like this:

November 9 mg, December 8.1 mg, January 7.3 mg, February 6.6 mg, March 6 mg

 

That is if it was a smooth 10% taper…so 5 mg would definitely be pushing it over the limit. 
It is best not to make any fast updoses….max would be 10%. So you could try anything between 5 and 5.5 mg. I always stress caution as it is harder to undo to fast of an updose then to slowly increase. 
Are you weighing your doses?

 

Thanks, i appreciate that. Maybe i’ll titrate up slowly as well. No hasty moves. 
 

i havent been weighing as i was just snapping the 10mg in half with the pill cutter. Although i am using a file and strictly weighing my benzo to a very precise level so i’m not sure why i wasnt doing that with the ssri as well… probably not a bad idea to start that practice up