cipralex Withdrawal

[cippywithdrawal]

Hello All!

First a bit of background: I have been anxious from a young age, without really understanding what it was or why it was happening to me. I managed to overcome it by seeing a psychiatrist who gave me tonnes of wonderful techniques. During my first year of university- my dad got very sick suddenly and passed away. I think I was severely affected by the hospital experience and seeing him suffer, as well as how different my life became afterwards. In the past three years, I have been on and off different medications to help me cope. I wouldn't say I have ever been depressed- mostly anxious. I have been on citalopram, zoloft and cipralex, none of them for longer than a year. For ciralopram and zoloft, i went off of them because I thought I could handle myself without medication- but unfortunately needed to go back on. That is when I tried cipralex. After three months of being on it, I gained weight. I was always extremely exhausted, yawning, and finding it difficult to concentrate. When I had the rude awakening of the weight- i decided that was it. I was so angry with what had happened, i just stopped cold turkey. Medications can be a life saver, and I am not against them, but I would prefer if I could be medication free and handle my problems with natural cures...
I have now been off of cipralex for about two weeks. In the first week, i got a chest infection so it was hard to tell which symptoms were withdrawal and which were from being sick. From my experience with tapering off zoloft and cipralex i was prepared for the psychical symptoms of it such as sweating, shaking, anxiety attacks, dizziness etc. but I am SHOCKED and a little bit scared by my mental state right now. I don't understand how a drug could effect me so much when I was only on it for 3 months. I am constantly getting feelings of hopelessness and depression (which I have never had before, I am generally a very happy upbeat person!), self hatred, getting so angry at my boyfriend over the smallest things, crying spells, changing my mind constantly, forgetting things, feeling drunk, you name it- and i have it.

All i want to know is that these symptoms are temporary and will go away. I liked myself before i started experimenting with all of these drugs. I want to be back to normal!!! Anybody have advice?

sidenote: it is kind of funny looking back on it, but an example of my wild emotions are this--- last night i came home from work and started balling my eyes out because my boyfriend hadn't done my laundry for me and put it away, and i was SO ANGRY because he left a dish in the sink. I proceeded to throw my dirty laundry all against the wall in anger and cry in my bed. Over reacting much??? psycho!

[zombiehunter]

I've come off of cipralex before, going cold turkey is definetly a bad idea my GP put me on gradual lower doses over the course of a month and then I was to take one every second day instead of every day until I ran out, after I stopped I was feelin shitty for a couple of days but that passed.

did you go back on them after going cold turkey cos to be honest going cold turkey from them is a bad idea.

[Pi.R^2]

It's never wise to come off medications cold turkey against medical advice and I would strongly advise going back to see whoever prescribed it to talk about your concerns. It could be that it was working more than you realised, and with a bit of gentle exercise and change in diet you could counter the weight gain (presuming you are a healthy weight and don't need to gain!) you could happily go back on it. Or you could decide to take a little and wean off slowly, which could help with the withdrawal.

tl;dr go back and see the prescriber!