Alright

Yesterday night I slept a bit better. Still only 3 hours but felt a bit more rested. Before going to sleep I had activation. Then after waking up in the night I had some, again in the night. The mysterious pressure-tension-numbness-tingling-burning in my head relaxed a little bit down but my mind is still blanking a lot. Things that would actually trigger an event-related spontaneous thought, just stay sterile and I manually think about which spontaneous thought would come up at that moment before I got this kind of cognitive impairment. DPDR is an issue still. It 100% got worse. I wonder if the blank mind is related to that.

But one thing is for sure, after getting activated yesterday I certainly can say this is withdrawal. And this is very big (negative) milestone in my tapering journey because I was never getting so bad. I will wait out to stabilize. And if I see that my obsessions, especially about the blank mind, doesn’t get better, I want to hop on back on the drug. I had my obsessions more or less under control (with PSSD and such), but with this blank mind, if that doesn’t improve I don’t see that I can reduce my obsessions about it naturally. Because the very same, for my concerns about getting genitally numb, happened this time with another big fear of me: getting a blank mind. This fear is even older than the PSSD fear. I remember, shortly before going in this Zoloft, I crazily was obsessed if my mind was getting blank. Because I was suffering from non-drug related depersonalization and I saw people in the community talking about this symptom as the worst of all of them.

Sneaking off (and very unfortunately the arrival of the blank mind) the Zoloft seem to reduce the blunting effects on my obsessions. It erased all of my fears and obsessions, which opened room for other productive things, with the price of getting emotionally and mentally numb.

On doses like between 8-10mg I found a sweet spot where the drug did its work, and also let some emotions through. It would be actually smart to stay on that dose and make therapeutic work. But because of my sexual dysfunction and fear of developing PSSD, I wanted to get off as quickly as possible.

Ran on my guitar. Playing a particular tune made a tiny bit of fun which I didn’t expect at all.

I take my Zoloft always in the evenings at 7pm. I read that Zoloft is stimulating/activating so it would be actually smart to take that in the morning. So I decided to switch the time but is there anything I need to keep in mind? Any tips?

Thank you.

35 minutes ago, leminaseri said:

I take my Zoloft always in the evenings at 7pm. I read that Zoloft is stimulating/activating so it would be actually smart to take that in the morning. So I decided to switch the time but is there anything I need to keep in mind? Any tips?

Thank you.

You could move it to earlier in the day. Moving doses can be destabilising so do it carefully if you choose too. We suggest just 1 hour per day until you’re happy with the time. You could do it slower if you wanted. Maybe it doesn’t need to be first thing to have a positive effect.

1 hour ago, Chippy said:

Maybe it doesn’t need to be first thing to have a positive effect.

Sorry language barrier here.. can’t understand this.

19 minutes ago, leminaseri said:

Sorry language barrier here.. can’t understand this.

Sorry, to clear you might not need to move the dose all the way to first thing in the morning just away from bed time :)

I would like to officially announce that I increased my dose to 6,6mg. I’m very tired of using 4 syringes for getting the .0x digit. It was not a consistent method to measure and also the manufacturer of Zoloft says that their liquid must be put into water and be drank immediately. Measuring only one time the Zoloft is much much more reliable than measuring 2 times water, 1 time the original Zoloft and 2 times the final dilution. I even don’t expect that my symptoms ease. My only wish is not to get adverse reaction and that I can now stabilize on this dose. Unfortunately Mark Horowitz did a big damage to my wellbeing no matter how politely he meant everything.

I also decided a new, unpopular step in the future. To updose my sertraline even further, if the recent updosing doesn’t cause any trouble. If my system accepts the drug again, I will updose up to 25mg. I have had a life. I was stable. No need to play around with idealistic ideas such as “healing”.

What would be the timespan to wait out to see if the recent updosing was successful?

Thank you very much.

15 hours ago, leminaseri said:

I would like to officially announce that I increased my dose to 6,6mg. I’m very tired of using 4 syringes for getting the .0x digit. It was not a consistent method to measure and also the manufacturer of Zoloft says that their liquid must be put into water and be drank immediately. Measuring only one time the Zoloft is much much more reliable than measuring 2 times water, 1 time the original Zoloft and 2 times the final dilution. I even don’t expect that my symptoms ease. My only wish is not to get adverse reaction and that I can now stabilize on this dose. Unfortunately Mark Horowitz did a big damage to my wellbeing no matter how politely he meant everything.

Thanks for the update. Hold this dose nice and steady now. I think you are doing fine with syringes. So long as you do the same thing each day it will be close enough. Nothing is perfect when measuring. You can only do your best. Write out your exact method for making your dose if you want I can see if I have any comments about it.

2 hours ago, leminaseri said:

I also decided a new, unpopular step in the future. To updose my sertraline even further, if the recent updosing doesn’t cause any trouble. If my system accepts the drug again, I will updose up to 25mg. I have had a life. I was stable. No need to play around with idealistic ideas such as “healing”.

What would be the timespan to wait out to see if the recent updosing was successful?

Thank you very much.

I would not do this. This is way too high an updose. High updoses can get you into all sorts of trouble. My advice, don't make plans when you don't know how you will be yet. Just take this new dose, same each day, keep the the method as consistent as possible. I'll check it over if you want. Hold and wait. No rash choices.

22 hours ago, leminaseri said:

Ran on my guitar. Playing a particular tune made a tiny bit of fun which I didn’t expect at all.

2 hours ago, leminaseri said:

No need to play around with idealistic ideas such as “healing”.

I wouldn't start messing around with updosing, given that you're beginning to experience positive signs that the symptoms you were declaring permanent a week or two ago are not permanent. That, and your drug history has plenty this already and you've ended up here despite that, suggesting that it really isn't a magic solution.

2 hours ago, leminaseri said:

I also decided a new, unpopular step in the future. To updose my sertraline even further

It's not "unpopular"- you can make your own decisions and do whatever you choose.

You'd like us to give you advice on how to do something we consider very risky the "safe way", which is obviously going to be difficult for us.

3 hours ago, leminaseri said:

I also decided a new, unpopular step in the future. To updose my sertraline even further, if the recent updosing doesn’t cause any trouble. If my system accepts the drug again, I will updose up to 25mg. I have had a life. I was stable. No need to play around with idealistic ideas such as “healing”.

one step at a time buddy, i don't know if updosing that much would bring good results for you. better just stay at 6.6mg, providing it did give you some relief, maybe your body needs a break from tapering, you could hold 6.6mg (or maybe 6.8mg if you been better there) for a long time as your body slowly stabilizes further.

3 minutes ago, Chippy said:

Thanks for the update. Hold this dose nice and steady now. I think you are doing fine with syringes. So long as you do the same thing each day it will be close enough. Nothing is perfect when measuring. You can only do your best. Write out your exact method for making your dose if you want I can see if I have any comments about it.

Hey @Chippy thank you for responding. Nothing wrong complicated with using one syringe and pulling the liquid Zoloft. 6,6mg equals to 0,33ml. That’s done with a single syringe. Whereas the 6,52mg was only possible with a 20-fold dilution. Which was extremely unreliable to me.

6 minutes ago, Chippy said:

I would not do this. This is way too high an updose. High updoses can get you into all sorts of trouble. My advice, don't make plans when you don't know how you will be yet. Just take this new dose, same each day, keep the the method as consistent as possible. I'll check it over if you want. Hold and wait. No rash choices.

I don’t see getting better any soon. And I don’t think that my experience is entirely and only specific to withdrawal. I was severely obsessed and anxious about getting SFN and PSSD and losing my wonderfully lovely wife to those conditions. It wasn’t a good choice at all to taper. I am devastated by Mark Horowitz. He meant things good yeah but I am the one suffering now. I was never ready to make a taper in first place. “Your brain won’t notice..” still didn’t age well.

Anyways, as you may understand I had terrible anxiety and big stress going on for almost 2 years. This does something with me regardless of withdrawal.

I decided again to leave the forums. I will come back to update you.

Ps: if Mark would be an expert, he would ask me how my life stressors are, and then he would advise to hold. lol. I’m damaged by him. I’m damaged by a “doctor” who got damaged by other “doctors”. The person who had to be the most careful to his counselors, destroyed my whole life with 1 advice. I hope there aren’t lots of damaged people like me in his clinic.

This head symptoms doesn’t seem to go away. I only found 2 accounts who recovered from dozens on SA. Everyone in this forum even with these symptoms complain about them for years. And for me the most brutal thing I’m still on the drug. I have cold turkey symptoms with making a reduction of approximately 4% loooolll. 4% reduction.

Take care everyone. I wish you all a speedy and full recovery. I will update you.

On 9/27/2026 at 9:47 AM, leminaseri said:

This head symptoms doesn’t seem to go away. I only found 2 accounts who recovered from dozens on SA. Everyone in this forum even with these symptoms complain about them for years.

Head pressure and burning are really common symptoms.

I recovered from them.