Can anyone help please?

I came off Prozac 2 years ago and last year went back to square one gp put me on sertraline for 8 months awful side effects back on Prozac 40mg 8 weeks hopefully it will fully kick in soon when it does ? I’ll never come off it again you have prob knocked all your seretonin to bits I’m sure it will kick back in best wishes vicky

Yes it is a side effect... your poor body would not know what is going on. One day it has serotonin the next day it does not get it. I made the nasty mistake of doing that once and even dropped down to every 3rd day... it soon caught up to me and I fell into a rotten depression again it then took a lot of work to get back stable again. You have been on these meds for 9 years every day... imagine if you drank 5 cups of coffee every day for 9 years then suddenly decided not to have even 1 cup every second day.

Thank you for your comments, I do hope it’s a side effect. Don’t think I’ll ever come off these if it messes with my system

It's not a good idea to wean off by missing days - your brain will start to complain that its missing that dose.  Instead you should reduce daily by the minimal amount you can.  I took 20mg Citalopram (different but still an SSRI) and reduced my dose by 5mg each reduction over 1-2 months each time.  It took me a year to completely withdraw and I had no side effects.  I had come off some years earlier over a 6 month period and had withdrawal effects.

Going slow also is kinder to the body and helps the anxiety not to return.  Also reading / understanding about how anxiety comes about, why it stays and how to help myself was one of the biggest helps in my recovery too and has helped me to no longer fear anxiety and have been meds free 18 months now (though I now take over the counter 5-HTP instead.  Still going strong.

Anxiety becomes a fear of anxiety itself and so it ends up feeding itself.  Anxiety produces fearful thoughts which also cause anxiety which adds to the pot.  Feeling the beginnings of those old familiar feelings can result in feeling unsettled and then before you know it you're back in the anxiety / fear / anxiety cycle again.  Understanding helps so much.

K x

If you're doing ok best not to start playing around with dosing at least without doctors advice. Your heading for trouble if you do that especially since you've been on a fixed regime for a very long time.

Why change things now?

I have been on and off fluoxetine a handful of times over the years. Yes it is a side effect but if you are having anxiety rather than your depression feeling worse maybe speaking to your GP and seeing if there is anything that can help with the anxiety side of things. If you're in a place where you feel ready to drop your dosage it would be a shame to go backwards. I'm not a gp so there may not be an alternative but it cant hurt to ask.