Olanzapine 2.5mg for 3 years. Suffering with dosage reduction.

Hi all, Im 36 from Brisbane Australia.

I need some rather urgent help... as I have not been feeling well these past few days.

BACKGROUND

I have been on olanzapine 2.5mg per day for about 3 years. I also take 40mg of Fluroxetine per day and have reduced my Clonazepam from 2mg per night slowly down to 1mg over the past few months.

These medications were prescribed to me when I was detoxing from daily Diazepam and heavy cannabis use (my new GP replaced the Diazepam with Clonazepam). I had also been on long term, fairly high dosage Lexapro which the Fluroxetine replaced around this same time 3 years ago.

I have been diognosed with cptsd and generalised anxiety disorder, and while I have had outbursts of rage and emotional disregulation from time to time I have never been diognosed with bipolar disorder had any true manic periods.

I don't believe I should have been put on this medication to be honest, but what is important now is coming off it (along with eventually coming off my 1mg Clonazepam and 40mg Fluroxetine.)

DOSAGE REDUCTION

I have over the past few months, reduced my dosage from 2.5mg down to 1.25mg by using my pill cutter (which I am aware is not an accurate way to precisely measure dosage with this medication).

I had not noticed any negative side effects lowing down to 1.25mg (while also slowly tapering off my Clonazepam at about reduction rate of 0.25mg every month or every two months).

Just over a month ago I reduced again using a pill cutter (which is getting very hard to accurately do) down to approximately 0.75mg.

I stayed on this dosage for about a month and about 10 days ago I went from 0.75mg to nothing... which I'm beginning to feel may not have been a great idea? 😕

The first few days of not taking it, I hadn't noticed any severe or worrying side effects aside from some slight sleep disturbances and occasional headache.

But the past couple of days I have been feeling increasingly agitated, anxious, worried and just a feeling of unease/unwell.

I have lost my appetite the past few weeks.

I have also been changing my eating habits and exercising more the past 6 months while coming off these medications... I have lost 23 kgs which has been pretty fantastic over a 6 month period.. so there has been some great benefits already, I'm just a little concerned as to weather I should have done another few slower steps of tapering as I'm unable to see my GP over the holiday season.

Anyway, I hope you all have a nice christmas today.

Lots of love from Oz.

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