I'm slowwwllyyyy coming off of Mirtazapine but am scared to death!

Hi Rachel - well done for getting down to 7.5mg! You've probably heard/read that at lower doses Mirt is more sedating, so not surprising you are still suffering from the tiredness. How long have you been on it in total? I also suffered with extreme tiredness that lasted for about 2-3 months but it has now thankfully totally disappeared. (I was also put on it for severe insomnia and related anxiety.). I've managed to slowly taper down to 8mg at the moment. Not sure where you're based, but have you considered buying the liquid form? It's expensive (about £60 a bottle) as you can't usually get it on the NHS, but it lasts a really long time and in my opinion it is sooooo worth the money because you can really accurately measure your doses for the purpose of tapering. I tried cutting pills and it gets impossible after a while. At some point it is going to get difficult to measure even with the syringe and liquid, but you can get right down to about 0.3mg with it. This way you can do a slower, more accurate taper and this will definitely help lessen the WD. One tip - if you do buy the liquid you'll need to buy a different syringe to the one included in the bottle which is a fat syringe provided for people taking a 15mg dose. Take the bottle to your local chemist and tell them you're slowly tapering and ask to buy a 1ml syringe that fits it. which will give you the ability to measure much more smaller, accurate doses. Remember also that you need to convert your dose: 15mg of pill = 1ml of liquid. Final tip - when switching to the liquid form, don't do a drop at the same time. Give it a week or 2 after switching to the liquid, as the switch can sometimes cause mild WD itself (the doctor will tell you it doesn't, but just my experience and better to be safe than sorry!). Good luck, let me know how you get on x

I'm 2 weeks off the drug completely now as I was having the same problem - sleeping TOO much! I went from 45 to 30, then 30 to 15 (this was the hardest jump for me), then 15 to 7.5. Then like you just breaking off a tiny bit. Then I just stopped.

My main issue was anxiety and low mood which caused insomnia. It worked wonders for that but feeling groggy all the time as well as just generally apathetic made me decide to come off it. Plus the fact that I barely recognised myself in pictures from a year ago from looking so bloated was another factor.

For me, the bad news is that yes after a week or so off them I could already feel myself not sleeping as much. However, the good news is that even though I might not get as many hours, the quality of sleep is better (so far). On Mirt I could sleep a good solid 8-9 hours, but would wake up feeling like I had barely slept. I might only get half that, sometimes less, but I've learned not to stress about that as that contributes to me not sleeping.

For me I think the fear of having to get up having barely slept and "how will I function" adds to my anxiety and it's a vicious cycle. So far the general anxiety hasn't come back, maybe I've just been lucky or maybe I've not been off it long enough, but the ups of feeling like myself again and already seeing a difference is my weight outweighs the insomnia.

Best of luck with it, everyone's experience is different. But I can say being off it where I'm generally feeling the ups as well as the downs is something I focus on when I am getting the anxiety and insomnia.

Hi Rachel

before you do anything i strongly encourage you to join or just browse and take as much information as possible on survivingantidepressants.org

Hi Rachel. You are on a lot of meds that effect your brain which could be conflicting with each other causing you to feel unwell - so it's no surprise you don't feel good. Also taking Mirtazapine combined with a Benzo like Clonazepam would cause a lot of sedation.