I am feeling worse with lots of side effects on fluoxetine

Hello Mandy I am a long-time veteran of Prozac (fluoxetine) who has bern off of it for more than 6 months due to it just not helping anymore. My psychiatrist yesterday urged me to start back on it as I had asked for Lexapro and he vehemently refused to put me on it saying that "..it is a much older medication and since I'm bipolar and wasnt able to tolerate any of the mood stabilizers .. there would be no value in putting me on Lexapro since my "diagnosis" is bipolar." I took one this morning and I feel irritable like I did when I stopped it before. For the pasr 6 months I had been taking the nutrient l-Theanine and I wasnt feeling as darkly depressed, but still very down. My medical doctor told me that NO medication was going to help if i didnt seek counseling and find a way to be happier. However, after decades of counseling AND medication, I'm still very sad much of the time. This may be too much info, but during some very manic years beginning in 1999, I cheated on my husband who wasnt invested in me or our marriage, and everything blew up in my life (i know what did i expect but my mania was in charge). After getting off of Effexor XR, the mania disappeared and the depression descended upon me and has never left again. I was put on Prozac which i wanted to believe was working, and I stayed on it for at least five to six years. I know this is a roundabout journey of what's happened to me but when the 20 milligrams of Prozac didn't seem to be working anymore I asked my medical doctor who was giving it to me at the time if a higher dose or a different medication work and he put me on 30 milligrams once a day. It just seemed to make me even more irritable and so I phased myself off of it when the last of the bottle was gone and haven't been on it like I said for 6 months or more now. I know you're in a very hard place and I hope that something will help you but don't let anyone tell you that you just have to sort your emotions without medication that would be up to you and only you. I do take a lot of natural herbs and remedies that have helped with my anxiety but it takes a lot of reading to find them and also it's just the same as medication AKA trial and error. Just as other posters have said I would certainly seek medical attention for your lack of appetite because you do need to eat for sure. Just because a person's name is MD or Ph.D after it doesn't mean they know your body only you do and you must take control of what you do to help it. If something isn't helping then you have the right to question that and even to stop taking whatever that substance is. I wish you the very best during this difficult time.

hi mandy i was wondering what types of side effects u had after stopping prozac i took it for 4 weeks and stopped i was having very bad side effects and how long dud ur side effects last