Oh what mistakes I have made....

I was first given fluoxetine way back in 1995 after the birth of my son. I am the product of a broken home and traumatic upbringing so, yes, motherhood was overwhelming. Honestly, though, the drug, once it kicked in, lifted a cloud. My life changed dramatically, for the good (so I thought), shortly thereafter.

Fast-forward, I'm 56 years old, happily married to my second husband, and have a successful teaching career. My son is grown and has a career in nursing, and my daughter is starting graduate school. I have mindlessly continued taking the fluoxetine all these years, with only one failed attempt to stop: when I got pregnant with my daughter.

Pushing 60 years old, I decide to get a full body MRI as part of my annual physical exam, just to get a baseline at this point in my life. Thank God I did: a small brain tumor, believed to be a benign meningioma, is discovered at the base of my skull. After having it successfully removed, I decide to "clean up" my life. I clean out my toiletries, follow the EWG website, change my diet, and.... decide I no longer need the fluoxetine.

Rather than search the internet, I believed my GP would help me with this process, so I made an appointment. And so began my stroll into hell. That was late summer, 2025. Since that time, I have spent a week on the psych unit of a local hospital, fighting their attempts to poly-drug me, lost 27 pounds (~12 kg), and I have resigned from my teaching position of over 20 years (over 30 years total in the profession).

I am currently holding on 20 mg. of the fluoxetine and am very destabilized. I have been at this dose since June 13. SI is pretty bad, mostly to escape the akathisia symptoms that I feel about every other day. Depression, morning anxiety, diarrhea, loss of appetite, insomnia, and anhedonia are also pretty popular in my world.

Having been on this poison for so many years, and having experienced further damage from attempting to reinstate, I am pretty hopeless at this point and feel stuck. I am not willing to increase my dose, nor will I try any new medications. I do have a prescriber who is willing to help me taper, but she admits to having no training in doing so. I am sharing all the resources I have found with her, and she has a copy of Maudsley. She has even agreed to reach out to Dr. Jennifer Giordano (https://www.trueyoupsych.com/) for any guidance Dr. G may be able to provide.

Anyway- here I am. Nice to meet you!

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

 

Thank you for updating your signature.

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

 

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!

4 hours ago, MLew said:

Rather than search the internet, I believed my GP would help me with this process, so I made an appointment. And so began my stroll into hell.

This will be familiar and relatable to many here. Most people in the west have had it drilled into them to not listen to the internet and take advice only from doctors. On the face of it, this seems to be very sensible advice until you come to learn that the harms done by these drugs have been known about by the pharmaceutical companies and drug safety regulators in various countries for decades and to put it simply, they've done little to nothing about them.

4 hours ago, MLew said:

Since that time, I have spent a week on the psych unit of a local hospital, fighting their attempts to poly-drug me, lost 27 pounds (~12 kg), and I have resigned from my teaching position of over 20 years (over 30 years total in the profession).

Just to be clear, the drugs in your signature are the only ones you have taken?

It's fairly common that people experience drastic weight loss in withdrawal, I lost 10kg in the first 3 weeks.

4 hours ago, MLew said:

I am currently holding on 20 mg. of the fluoxetine and am very destabilized. I have been at this dose since June 13. SI is pretty bad, mostly to escape the akathisia symptoms that I feel about every other day. Depression, morning anxiety, diarrhea, loss of appetite, insomnia, and anhedonia are also pretty popular in my world.

Sadly, these are all pretty "classic" symptoms from withdrawal and dose changes of these drugs. The positive aspect to that though, is that people can and do recover from such symptoms.

4 hours ago, MLew said:

Having been on this poison for so many years, and having experienced further damage from attempting to reinstate, I am pretty hopeless at this point and feel stuck. I am not willing to increase my dose, nor will I try any new medications.

Fair enough, we're not going to push you either way. You may receive suggestions from others about what they think might be best for you but anything you read here will always be just that- a suggestion.

My own view is that you're likely right to just hold where you are and hope to stabilise in time. Any further dose changes are just guessing at this time and we've seen that less is more in cases where people are significantly destabilised- you can end up doing much more harm than good with more and more dose changes. You've already experienced this just worsening and worsening you until you decide "no more".

4 hours ago, MLew said:

I do have a prescriber who is willing to help me taper, but she admits to having no training in doing so. I am sharing all the resources I have found with her, and she has a copy of Maudsley. She has even agreed to reach out to Dr. Jennifer Giordano (https://www.trueyoupsych.com/) for any guidance Dr. G may be able to provide.

In situations like this, we'd normally suggest not tapering further until you've stabilised more. This is based on my impression that you tolerated this drug well for a long time before all of this- the hope would be that in time you will come to stabilise and tolerate the dose you're at better.

If you can stabilise, there is then potential to do a much slower taper that will hopefully be much, much more tolerable for you and hopefully will not destabilise you again. We have information on a range of methods for this, but again my feeling is that these are best explored further down the line if you can stabilise whilst holding.

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

Hey @MLew Welcome to the forum, glad you found us!

Could you tell us how you felt betwen each stage below, perhaps rate your symptoms out of 10, 1 being mild 10 being the worse you could imagine?:

Summer 2025- CT'd fluoxetine

December 2025- Attempted 10 mg reinstatement, failed

February 2026- increased dose to 30 mg.

June 2026- decreased to 20 mg., currently holding

I could use some hope. Anyone have any examples to share of healing (or progress) that has occurred as they have tapered?

Thanks,

M.

If you browse around this forum, you'll find some members who have improved whilst tapering.

However, this forum is fairly young (less than a year old) and we don't really advertise it. The SA forum that is now read only has many years' worth of stories built up. I would suggest looking through the success stories there:

Success stories: Recovery from psychiatric drug withdrawal - Surviving Antidepressants

Have you read the posts above? We really wouldn't recommend tapering at this point until you're in a more stable condition.

Hi there, thanks for responding on my initial post. It does sound as though your symptoms are very similar to mine. It’s hell isn’t it? Mornings for me are a real survival battle.

The really positive thing for you is that you’ve only been on one med (granted for a long time).

Take as long as you can to stabilise - many months. Your body knows what to do to get to homeostasis but it needs to be allowed to do that.

Take care 🙏