Discontinuation symptoms often include physical complaints that aren't commonly found in depression, such as dizziness, flulike symptoms, and abnormal sensations. Discontinuation symptoms disappear quickly if you take a dose of the antidepressant, while drug treatment of depression itself takes weeks to work.
You will just need to taper more slowly, with smaller reductions in dose, over a longer period of time. Only occasionally, where an antidepressant causes serious side-effects, should it be stopped suddenly, without tapering. If this does happen, see your doctor urgently.
Talk to your doctor before you stop taking antidepressants. It's important that you do not stop taking antidepressants suddenly. A dose of antidepressants should be slowly reduced, normally over 4 weeks, but sometimes longer.
Quitting an antidepressant suddenly may cause symptoms within a day or two, such as: Anxiety. Insomnia or vivid dreams. Headaches.
Going off an antidepressant usually involves reducing your dose in increments, allowing two to six weeks between dose reductions. Your clinician can instruct you in tapering your dose and prescribe the appropriate dosage pills for making the change.
Symptoms usually appear within a few days of stopping, or dose reduction. Symptoms include anxiety, crying, dizziness, headache, increased dreaming, insomnia, irritability, myoclonus, nausea, electric shocks (zaps), tremor, flu-like symptoms, imbalance, and sensory disturbances.
People taking Paxil and Effexor often have more intense withdrawal symptoms. These drugs have short half-lives and leave the body faster than drugs with long half-lives. The faster an antidepressant leaves the body, the worse the withdrawal symptoms. This is because of the sudden imbalance of chemicals in the brain.
Avoid drugs and alcohol.
It's especially important that you don't try to use recreational drugs or alcohol to replace your medication. While they may numb difficult feelings temporarily, they will make you feel a lot worse in the long term and prevent you being able to come off your medication safely.
It's usually recommended that a course of antidepressants continues for at least 6 months after you feel better, to prevent your condition recurring when you stop. Some people with recurrent illness are advised to carry on taking medicine indefinitely.
SSRIs like Paxil (paroxetine), which has a half-life of about one day, should be tapered down over a longer period than drugs like Prozac (fluoxetine), which has a half-life of two to four days. To avoid withdrawal symptoms, professional guidelines recommend that patients should not stop antidepressants abruptly.
Antidepressant discontinuation syndrome is common
Symptoms occur within two to four days after drug cessation and usually last one to two weeks (occasionally may persist up to one year). If the same or a similar drug is started, the symptoms will resolve within one to three days.
Symptoms of Antidepressant Withdrawal
Symptoms of antidepressant discontinuation syndrome tend to be mild. They usually start within two to four days, and last just a week or two. 3 Symptoms include: Flu-like symptoms: such as fatigue, sweating, achiness, headache, and feeling sluggish.
Perhaps the most recognizable among them is Prozac (fluoxetine). It's still the best option for many people, but since it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1987, Prozac has been joined by a variety of other antidepressant medications.
In some patients, stopping or reducing the dose of an antidepressant can lead to electrical sensations (or brain zaps) perceived as occurring inside the brain. Brain zaps can cause varying levels of discomfort and disability. The pathomechanism of brain zaps is unknown but seems to be related to lateral eye movement.
Typical symptoms of antidepressant discontinuation syndrome include flu-like symptoms, insomnia, nausea, imbalance, sensory disturbances, and hyperarousal. These symptoms usually are mild, last one to two weeks, and are rapidly extinguished with reinstitution of antidepressant medication.
For people with chronic or severe depression, medication may be needed on a long-term basis. In these cases, antidepressants are often taken indefinitely. That is, in part, because depression is not an illness that can be cured.
Relapse is most likely to occur within 2 months of stopping treatment for a previous episode. A depression recurrence happens when symptoms return months or years after a person has recovered from the last episode. This is most common within the first 6 months.