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My experience of coming off sertraline

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I have found this site very helpful during the period that I was taking sertraline and felt I should share my experiences of coming off the drug, in the hope that they may be of help to others.

I was diagnosed with depression last year and have been on 200mg of sertraline for approx 10 months. I also had some therapy during this period and recently took the decision (with my doctor's support) to come off the medication. Wary of repeating the experiences some other posters on this site have had I resolved to reduce my dosage gradually over a period of about a month (more gradually than suggested by my doctor).

Each week I reduced the dosage by 50mg a day. So week one I went down to 150mg a day, week 2 100mg a day etc. The first two weeks were fine with no real changes. By the end of week 3 I began to feel a bit light headed, with hot sweats and dry-mouth also returning. As a result I remained on this dose another week instead of stopping altogether in week 4.

I have now been 5 days with no sertraline and have found the experience of quitting surprisingly easy. I still feel a little light-headed now and again, but other side effects I suffered during the full dose (yawning, tiredness, sexual dysfunction) have all but gone, and although I kind of miss the 'wrapped in cotton wool' feeling I am glad to be back to life without medication.

For what its worth I would suggest that gradual reduction of dosage is the most effective way to avoid the worse of the side-effects experienced when coming off sertraline and that the good news (for me anyway) has been the speed at which the side-effects disappeared.

31 likes, 450 replies

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  • gavin20156
    gavin20156 Guest

    Posted

    Ok well...i have been on 100mg of sertraline for the last two years. Roughly 4 weeks ago i woke up one morning and decided the time was right to stop. I had, over the previous few days started to feel really good again so took the decision to stop taking them altogether. I booked an appointment to see my doctor but that wasnt going to be for a few weeks time (just in case things deteriorated).

    I hadn't noticed any side effects until this weekend and have been very nauseous with a really annoying headache that wont go...apart from that though its been all good. Hoping the headache will go soon as i am not so good at dealing with headaches lol.

  • jGloucs
    jGloucs Guest

    Posted

    I'm just coming off Sertraline after about 5 years (50mg). I was so scared of coming off too quickly after such a long time, I just shaved a bit off each tablet until I was shaving almost half off, then just cut them in half.  I've been on half a tablet for a few weeks, and now am having half every other day. Ideally I'd like to go to a quarter of a tablet, but I'm not sure if I can cut the tablets that small. Going to give it a go today. I think a  quarter every day, rather than half every other day feels better in terms of tapering.  My concern is that during the time I've been on it I've gained a lot of weight. (Just me, or anyone else?) I was also diagnosed with type. 2 diabetes. Does anyone think this is to do with the weight gain caused by the tablets, and how long after stopping you can lose the weight?  Not sure it'll affect the diabetes diagnosis, unfortunately. 

    Regards

    J

  • maria12178
    maria12178 Guest

    Posted

    i dont know wether to go the doctors myself i have come down 50mg from 150mg and feel really bad tempered and irrable .wondering how long this is going to last ..same thing happened when i tried to come of them before.
  • james80289
    james80289 Guest

    Posted

    Hello All ,ive been on sertraline since early 2013 and am now off them having ramped the dosage down over a long period (weeks) but i have been tearful and am struggling with day to day life ,i get head buzzes ,put on an awful lot of weight feel so tired at times .Does it get better over time ?
  • Daddee777
    Daddee777 Guest

    Posted

    Sounds to me as though you may still need a low dose to keep you on an even keel. After several years of yo-yoing up and down I have been taking 25-50mg per day for over 10 years and it has worked very well.

    You do need to look at your lifestyle in detail as well.

    What you eat and drink, how you spend your days / occupy yourself, social interaction, exercise etc all make a big difference.

  • debbie96569
    debbie96569 Guest

    Posted

    I have been taking Setraline for the past 4 years. It helped tremendously with my panic attacks and tears- I have a son who got into serious trouble which I felt I was somehow responsible for-and needed something to help!  I felt it was time to quit taking it so I have been off of the 50mg a day that I took for a week now and starting to feel dizzy and the brain body shocks that you guys have reported. Glad I found this site and everyone's comments!  You have eased my mind that this is normal and it won't last! Thank You Everyone!!! 

     

  • jGloucs
    jGloucs Guest

    Posted

    Hi Debbie56969,

    Are you tapering your dose to come off it rather than stopping altogether? 

    • debbie96569
      debbie96569 jGloucs

      Posted

      I stopped cold turkey! I knew that 50 mgs was a small dose so I was hoping there weren't going to be many if any side effects. Well I was wrong!! From reading everyone's comments it seems like most are having symptoms regardless of taper or cold turkey so on that note I'm not going to take any more just going to ride this wave till it ends!! Half life is 2 weeks someone posted so I figure a month or so and hopefully I'll be back to symptomless!! Good Luck with your journey jGloucs!
  • jGloucs
    jGloucs Guest

    Posted

    As you can read from a previous post, I was on 50mg for 5 years and tapered for about 3 months. I only started to get discontinuation symptoms when I reduced to about a quarter of a tablet. I was dizzy, had hot sweats, palpitations, digestive upset, anger, confusion plus other minor things that may also be attributable. I found it very distracting and difficult to function normally. It has taken several weeks for the worst of the symptoms to pass but I still don''t  feel completely clear. Half life of Sertraline is between 22- 36 hours. I found it easier to keep symptoms at bay by taking a tiny amount EVERY day, rather than half a tablet every other day. I suppose that's because it kept the levels of Sertraline circulating. 
  • alyssa89064
    alyssa89064 Guest

    Posted

    I have been on sertraline for 3 years at 25 mg. It helped drastically with my panic attacks even though it was at such a small dosage. I began to get bruxism and I did more research and decided I wanted a different kind of drug. My doctor told me to cut the pill in half and take a half a pill a day for a week along with my new drug Brusiprone (7.5 mg 3 times a day). After the first week I should continue with brusiprone 3 times a day. It is the third week and I've noticed that since quitting the sertraline I have been having headaches numerous times a day and pain in my jaw line/teeth. Is this normal and will it go away? 
    • shia
      shia alyssa89064

      Posted

      Hi i was also on sertraline for 3 years at 200mg per day and i just had enough and stopped them which is silly i know. I was fine for the first week but towards the end of the second i started experiencing dizzy spells, headaches and a strange spaced out feeling, so yes this must be the effects of quitting also i couldnt watch tv or read for long cos my eyes couldnt keep up with it if you know what i mean which brought on dizziness and feeling sick. I did lose half a stone in the first 10 days which i believed i gained due to the sertraline so im now back at my previous weight. Im now 2mths sertralineless and feeling alot better. I hope you too are feeling better and your withdrawal symptoms have calmed down. Id love to hear how your getting on.
  • daniel91307
    daniel91307 Guest

    Posted

    Hi,

    I was on 50mg for 8 weeks for anxiety, and now have been advised to up my dose to 100mg and have been on this dose for the last 5 weeks. I'm now slowly trying to ween myself off this drug and have gone back down to 50mg for the past 3 days. I now have noticed that chest pains, tiredness, shortness of breath and general body aches are slowly creeping in every now and then.

    My gp knows what I'm doing and I know I will beat this and completely end my time on sertraline however can someone just tell me how long it will take to balance out as I don't want to ween off to quick and it finish badly. I'm due to travel the world on the 27th of Dec 2015 (12 weeks away) and I'm desperate to get any help or tips I can to finish these tablets but maintain sanity haha. Can anyone recommend when I should maybe go down to 25mg? Also is it a bad idea to break the sertraline tablets in half?

    Any advice or tips would be awesome!

    Thanks a lot,

    Daniel.

  • jo94316
    jo94316 Guest

    Posted

    Hi,  Thank you for your post.  I have come off my medication after 5 and a half years.  Just 50mg per day.  I am getting tingling in my lips and all over my body on and off.  Does this sound similar to the "electric shocks" people are describing?  I have developed a bit of a hand shake as well, foggy head and may or maynot of just walked into a wallsmile nothing serious no injury whatsoever but kinda wondering  is this normal?  I did the wrong thing and went cold turkey.....i know i know but i was told by a doctor that 50 mg wasn't much so i didn't think much of going off....until I read up on side effects on this site today.
  • emily81526
    emily81526 Guest

    Posted

    Hi , thank you for sharing this. I am currently on day 10 of halving my 200 dose. Having side effects like night sweats, nightmares, feeling dizzy and sick. Going to my gp today. They have suggested halving the dose a month at a time.

    I get the electric shock feeling in my head, it's horrible. It gives me comfort to hear that these effects do subside. I was on citalopram from the age of 15 up to a year ago when I was switched to setraline a year ago. I'm now 26 . I am on them for anxiety . I will update this post as I continue. Thank you again xx

    • don45258
      don45258 emily81526

      Posted

      Hi I'm on the tapering path are you suffering f from intrusive thoughts ? That's my problem at the moment
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