Omeprazole has ruined my life

you only took those evil pills for a week... think about me who took them for 9 weeks.. it has been 7 months since i stopped the evil med but i am still in anxiety and panic and depression... i was crying so much because of the anxiety i was close to suicide.. i had to take an antipsychotic which has somewhat reduced the extreme fear and screaming like crying but i still cry and am highly anxious and restless and my vision is constantly blurred.. not to mention the extreme fatigue .. my fingers feel lifeless, i can hardly do anything with them ... the antipsychotic also works like antiallergy so maybe thats how it worked a bit on me...

exercise and diet should help.

brain fogs due to sertonin levels.

look up ways to boost them

Sorry but I don't think there is a straight answer for this question. It really depends on the individual. When you state, anxiety, what are you experiencing? Fatigue and restlessness are all a part of anxiety. From time to time, I too feel anxious during everyday activities. However, it is encouraging that you have you good days and bad days. I am going thru this cycle too and hope that the good days get better and the bad days aren't as bad. I can't explain fully but I get this tense feeling (especially in my abdomen) that makes me feel restless and want to hurry to the next task which affects my ability to focus. Very annoying. I can't get any doctors to comment or investigate. I am convinced that it has something to do with how the long term exposure to this drug changes muscle function/anatomy (just my opinion). Lately, I have been getting relief from physical therapy/massage/dry needling/stretching. In addition to that, moving around to get to promote blood circulation is beneficial. I know it's a big challenge in the face of fatigue but you got to do it. I would also suggest that you keep taking your supplements even if you are off your PPI. You have to keep feeding back what the PPIs took away. Good luck.

I have been very tired for weeks now. I was getting better around week 3. But I've started taking these multivitamins and since I started them my anxiety has been much more constant and I've been dealing with a lot of depersonalisation. It's a terrible feeling, but I keep fighting even if it takes all my energy. I miss feeling healthy, but I won't let myself give up.

omg this is so true... the anxiety i have is pretty much similar.. it seems like i have lost peace of mind and concentrating on even small things like watching tv or focusing on a conversation or waiting for something is a big big painful task.. there is an urge to hurry everything up. also fatigue so much so that i cant do anything except lie in bed.. my fingers seem to have lost control, grip and movement greatly.. even moving a pillow with fingers hurts.. my vision is so weak i cant focus without glasses.. also i have been crying a lot and panicking and also get irritated very easily.. do you cry a lot? my crying went to such extreme i had to take antipsychotic and it has reduced somewhat but its still there.. the feeling of restlessness and helplessness makes me cry.. i also miss my former self.. and wonder if i ll ever be my old self again... you are lucky you are seeing better days without any further medication.. i am still relying on the antipsychotic for my extreme anxiety..pls keep us posted on improvements you see.. is your vision clear and how long did you take omeprazole for?

You are the first person on this board that has described the same "anxiety" symptoms that I have been experiencing. I had been taking prevacid for almost 4 years due to terrible reflux. I have experienced some vision issues and now I need reading glasses. This really came very suddenly. Although it takes me forever to read and comprehend b/c of this anxiety.

Emotionally, I get frustrated easier than before but fortunately not to the point of crying. Sorry that you are reaching these depths. I have a lot of tension/soreness in my upper back and neck that has been resolving a little everyday. I am hoping that this will resolve for good but I have a feeling it will be a long road. My doctor wanted to put me on Lyrica for symptomatic relief. He is no longer my doctor. I hate these doctors; that's all they know how to do and not use their clinical training.

Please do take it day by day. Hold onto victories no matter how small they are. I will be sure to keep you updated. Hope you will do the same. Best of luck.

i took omeprazole for 9 weeks.. on the very first or second day of taking it, a terrible feeling of doom surrounded me and i began having panic attacks .. then came intense sadness which led to crying .. slowly it became chronic to the point i couldnt sleep or lie down and got the blurred vision suddenly which persists to this day even after 8 months.. took so many antidepressants and benzodiazapines but nothing worked... also antipsychotics.. i had to take them as intense crying was making me lose my mind and i thought death would be so much better... since starting the antipsychotic i have seen few calmer days in between but fatigue and blurred vision persist even on those days.. other days i have this crippling anxiety which has rendered me useless alongwith the fatigue... i would be so happy if i got my vision back as everything seems hazy without glasses.. my near vision is ok though.. i also wish you and everyone here a quick recovery but i have a feeling its going to be a long road for myself, that is if the recovery ever comes 😦

while writing about my woes, i forgot to ask.. have you seen any improvement in anxiety since you quit omeprazole? how long has it been since you stopped omeprazole?

Yes, avoid Lyrica if you like your personality as it is...

i am taking seroquel for my anxiety and crying.. but i have no other option... the anxiety and extreme crying were killing me .. do you think i should take medicine to curb anxiety? bcoz its not wearing away on its own 😦

That's a tough one. My Step son has taken Seroquel and I fear it caused him more problems. I'd do my utmost to avoid adding yet more pills in to the mix. GENTLY try reducing everything, but one thing at a time. Shave bits off pills but be very watchful of the effects. We are very much on our own here - we are breaking new ground with every combination of medication and body problem we experiment with - and it's own personal health and wellbeing that is on the line.

I THINK - I have no solid proof but a lot of supportive evidence - that doing things you like, or even things you actively dislike basically shuts the brain up and stops it worrying . Get some real problems or activities to fill it - don't give yourself the time to be anxious - just do... something.

I am NOT medically trained, but I've been about a lot. 😃

my doctor has only today increased my seroquel dose as he thinks at the minimum dose i wasnt getting much benefit.. i am also taking an antidepressant and a benzo which i am sure are doing nothing to help my condition but i have to continue anyway as i cant stop them abruptly without doctors advice. my doctor says once he gets me stable he will reduce what is unnecessary and put me on the bare minimum .. do you think this sounds right because my condition is very bad... i dont even have words to describe my anxiety! i tried going off all pills a month back and couldnt even get proper sleep , plus the crying was becoming too aggressive and out of control so i had to come back to the meds, mainly seroquel for the rescue!

My wife suggests Doxopin - a Tricyclic - very old antidepressant - for shell shock !

Do your very best to avoid seraquel - SSRIs are massively addictive. Once you start, you really can't stop in our experience. The crying you had is due to the abrupt stop of Seraquel, slow reduction is the only way. My wife and step son know this well. I have never taken any of these things and trust that I never shall. I'm on this forum because of what I have already become addicted to - I have acid in my mouth as I type, but I shall cope with it.

thank you really... but seroquel is an antipsychotic not an SSRI.... also before seroquel i was on zyprexa: another antipsychotic ever since i quit omeprazole.... i have only started seroquel three weeks back... the crying might be due to zyprexa or its withdrawal.. but after what you have pointed out, i am really scared of seroquel too.. it has gotten to a point where i or even the doctor cannot distinguish between my original anxiety caused due to omeprazole or the side effects of the psych meds or withdrawal from those meds.. in short i am in a deep black hole.. only GOD help me 😦

also do you think one day i ll be able to slowly reduce and then come off seroquel and the other psych meds? is your stepson currently on any psych meds!?

it is interesting how you figured i might have shell shock because i really do have ptsd and trauma like situation... if the crying is from the antipsychotics then i am certainly doomed to have acquired another affliction on top of my already existing anxiety

He is still on them... a total mess sadly, mostly due to badly prescribed meds.

I haven't seen anyone describe it as shell shock, but it makes sense. Since I got sick from it, I've come to become quite fearful. About a week ago I got a cold and my anxiety came back swinging. I begin to think negatively or believe I'm going insane, but it's bringing myself down from the point of near panic attack where I've learned it's okay to be scared or worried because I've gone through a lot, but I can't let it take over my life. Can't give up the fight!

you only took those meds for one week and still have the anxiety two months later? omg i took them for 9 weeks and yes i am fearful, anxious, crying, fatigued after 8 months.. question is how long will we keep suffering 😦

why was your son prescribed seroquel? anxiety or bipolar or schizo?

The correct spelling is Doxepin - "Limited quantities of tricyclic antidepressants should be prescribed at any one time because their cardiovascular and epileptogenic effects are dangerous in overdosage". says https://bnf.nice.org.uk/drug/doxepin.html#prescribingAndDispensingInformations

It was developed for the first world war ! Hence the shell shock reference. It is out of copyright and so I suspect is not pushed by the health system.

Taking nothing is always better, but sometimes there is no option. Then we have to expect and deal with the side effects.

It will not be long now before we can have totally individualised medical treatment prescribed by personal health monitors and the meds printed at home on your 3dMedKit. I hope I can see it happen soon !

Bipolar - which is a dubious diagnosis at best.

I took prevacid for almost 4 years and have been off of it for about 2.5 years. The first year were pre-occupied with dealing with the rebound reflux issues. The last 1.5 years have been a roller coaster with anxiety issues. I would say yes to your question but it surely takes time to see the improvement. It's easy to write but be patient and persevere b/c there were days I thought it would never get better. I truly "believe" that these PPIs are absolute poison.

yes these pills are poison... i remember having taken these for short durations i.e. for a max 14 days before but never had these issues.. this time it was different .. they ruined my life and took everything away from me .. and having read other peoples similar experiences, i am now sure it was nothing but these poison pills!

how better are you with regards to anxiety now from the time anxiety started? in percentage terms?

Hard to put a number on it as I have good days and bad days. I would say improvement of ranges from 30 to 50 percent from the time anxiety started but my anxiety symptoms are not as severe as your seem to be. Flare ups in anxiety symptoms are always accompanied by tightness in my back and neck.

I never had anxiety prior to starting Omeprazole, but developed it after. I'm either on my 4th or 5th week off and it's drastically reduced, but I did have some bad days in the process. Just these past 3 days I had almost constant anxiety. I over think and it causes me to worry about EVERYTHING. It can become very difficult at times to fight the feelings, but you have to keep fighting. Eventually it will go away! This isn't forever. A part of me thinks that due to my severe reaction to Prilosec I now have some form of PTSD. I went through a lot and I was only on it for a week!

its great that your anxiety has reduced without any medication... how about ptsd... do you think it will go away too? i wake up every morning with extreme fear and spend the whole day in anxiety, crying and fatigue.. i read somewhere that omeprazole induces fight or flight which leads to ptsd.. and anxiety is part of ptsd too.. basically it has effected my whole body.. my hair and nails arent the same anymore.. two toenails came off in the beginning.. my vision is greatly affected to the point everything is blurred. i have pain in my feet and knees.. sad part is i am taking further medication to get some sleep and control my crying spells.. wish my bearable days came without that.. do you feel the urge to cry? and do you wake up in fear too?

What I did was starting going to therapy. It has helped me learn how to manage my stress and how to handle panic. I did take some natural supplements early on to help with anxiety. Valerian Root helps with sleep and anxiety but it will basically knock you out and you could wake with blurry vision which I did. I also took 1/4 of a magnesium supplement and it helped my anxiety immensely, but caused my muscles to twitch and contract a lot. Really now I just have to handle the anxiety through positive thinking, which is hard for me, but also through keeping myself occupied. I know how hard it can be. I'm only 18 and this affected me. Just keep your mind occupied and try and get therapy. Having someone to talk to helps. I have gained a generalised phobia of medication now, so I plan to keep fighting the all natural way and based off my results it's just as effective. Stand strong and keep fighting. I don't know when it will end, but I know all I can do is keep on going forward.

judging by your experience, i think it will take a very long time for me to get out of this as i took the pills for much longer and apparently had a worse reaction than you had 😦 please keep us posted.. i hope a full recovery comes for all of us sooner rather than later!

do you think your vision will also get better or have you seen any improvememt already?

its like something evil is stopping me from living my life.. i am gagged and bound.. unable to do even a small task.. the anxiety is constant and so is the crying whenever i am alone... every day i feel like a great tragedy has occurred to me and i will never be the same again.. i need reassurances and answers to so many questions ..

I'm not sure if you have the same symptoms, but do you ever get moments of depersonalisation? Feeling disconnected or that things aren't real? That has been one side effect that has stuck with me.

yes seems like its a nightmare and it cant be real what has happened to me... for me everything has changed. the meaning of life has changed..theres an invisible fear always lurking around.. its hard to describe in words... i dont feel like me anymore.. its very surreal...

I would not say improvement but I would say that it has stabilized. There was a decline over a short period of time that dramatically affected my reading vision. Like I woke up one morning and I had a hard time reading regular font. It could have been due to the fact that I am at that age where reading glasses are needed but I was surprised that it happened so quickly.

This very much seems like generalized anxiety disorder, which I think I have as well. What I've learned to help is 30 mins of exercise a day! It gets your mind of things and tires you out so you can get a good nights sleep. I feel like everyone here should be in a group chat so we can all have one another to talk to. Talking really has helped me. Also there's an app you can download called First Opinion which is a 24/7 chat with a doctor and anytime you feel sick or some symptom that bothers you, they'll direct you to what you could have or what can help. It really has saved me.

have you heard of anaphylactic shock? a person can get this from an allergic reaction to meds and it can turn into a shock if the reaction is severe.. anxiety and an overwhelming feeling of doom and panic are sometimes part of anaphylactic shock.. other symptoms can be hives, trouble breathing and upset in digestive system.. i believe we the effected ones might have got an anaphylactic shock to omeprazole where our immune systems reacted severely to the med.. the treatment of such shock is adrenaline shots and later antihistamines.. but paradoxically adrenaline rush is what is thought to cause anxiety.. so i dont know if that can be considered..

i have heard cancer patients may experience anxiety and vision issues after chemo drugs .. this omeprazole poison has done much more than chemo 😦

thats great information.. yes i believe we must keep communicating to make our journey a bit more bearable.. can we have a whatsapp group? thats most convenient i think

Someone would need to make it since I'm not really familiar with whatsapp. But I do think it will help at least making things more manageable. This medication really has done a lot to us. I went to my GI doctor yesterday and I have an upper endoscopy scheduled for next month. So if I do have something that will find it. I also have an appointment with my GP this Saturday. I expect to finally get answers! Hopefully.

we can all write our cellphone numbers here and one of us can make a group and add all the numbers there.. if you dont have whatsapp you can download it.. i ll private msg u my number

Benny, this is nonsense. You're looking for answers that aren't there. Anaphylactic shock is a life threatening reaction to something that you have an allergy to. Antihistamines are used for minor allergies like a rash or hay fever for example. Adrenalin is needed for anaphylaxis and can only be given by injection and prescribed by a healthcare professional. It is an emergency situation and needs very rapid treatment. It has nothing to do with any form of anxiety, which is a neurotic type of mental illness. I personally cannot see a link between a PPI drug and neurosis. Perhaps you all had dyspepsia as part of your early neurosis which was then treated with a PPI drug. So, the neurosis started before you were given the PPI. Then, talking about it on this website isn' t helping you at all. You're just making yourselves worse.

With all due respect, I can 100% say that PPI's can cause anxiety. There have been studies done and a small percentage of those who took PPI's got anxiety. It is not neurosis, but rather seems like a change in the guts bacteria that caused the initial anxiety. My theory is that due to the severity of the symptoms we gained a milder form of PTSD or generalised anxiety. It will eventually go away, but it takes time and a lot of mental energy to do so. I've seen great progress from when my symptoms initially started to where I am now. Without actually experiencing what we have felt and gone through, you can't form an opinion that attacks what we know to be true.

you can go to ask a patient forum for omeprazole and see how many people got anxiety, nasty depresssion and nerve problems due to ppi use.. ppi is a poison which can cause all sorts of mental conditions ptsd, anxiety, panic, depression... a woman was unable to use her fingers to open a toothpaste top after ppi use and her hands lost total movement for months... what i am going through is a nightmare i wouldnt wish upon my worst enemy

supplementing with magnesium.. it is a big reason why these things are happening. ppi makes you deficient. magnesium makes muscles work properly. do your own research before believing me, or trying supplementing.

I have been taking a combined calcium, magnesium and zinc supplement since two months, also omega 3 fish oil, sublingual b12 and a probiotic... but have seen little to no improvement .. but i shall keep taking these in the hope they work someday when the ppi effect will fade in time (hopefully)... you think anxiety is due to muscle and nerve problem?

I am also curious if as little as a day of ppi use can induce anxiety and panic...before taking ppi this year, i had taken them for a max of 14 days last year but did not have any anxiety or problems whatsoever.. this time however i took them with the antibiotics for h pylori which maybe interacted with the ppi and hence my anxiety... but then other people here seem to have only taken the ppi and not the antibiotics and they still got anxiety.. very confusing!

what kind of magnesium is in your pill first of all? secondly, anxiety can be a symptom of magnesium deficiency. it has similar effects on your body as not having enough water, your body starts to panic and it has an effect on your adrenal glands.. anti biotics also deplete magnesium too. i also was on antibiotics with the PPI and i feel it exacerbated my problems.

stay strong.

Keep taking them. As michael911 mentioned, magnesium seems to be a usual suspect. I hope they start working for you. I have been supplementing for a couple of years but still struggle muscle symptoms.

Magnesium is better absorbed in acidic environment. I would imagine that some of us have compromised parietal cells due to long term exposure to PPIs.However the chelated varieties of magnesium are supposed to be absorbed regardless of environment and are associated with a lower incidence of diarrhea. Good luck.

yes i just read magnesium glycinate or magnesium threonate are better absorbed versus magnesium oxide which i am taking and only 4% of it gets absorbed.. i will have to check if the other forms are available where i live.. i am sure a lot of all my problems are due to blocking of acid secretion like you pointed out.. ppi stopped my internal bleed alongwith the antibiotics but left me with crippling anxiety!

yep i am in the exact same boat. i take magnesium chelate or chelated magnesium but glycinate is a good one too. i also take b12 and a multi vitamin. im only just now getting off the omeprazole but im hoping its only up from here. i quit vaping too to help with acid reflux. docs put me on anti depressants but they didnt help me at all. all i use now is a small dose of xanax maybe once a day.

how did you find out you were deficient in magnesium? antideps are useless for me too... i am also taking a benzo twice a day but whenever i try to reduce it without doctors advice, i get uncontrollable crying.. i cry other than that too.. do you have a sense of fear and urge to cry too? how much difference has magnesium made for you?

where i live, i cant find chelated magnesium 😦 i ll try ordering online... good news is i have quit taking all anti anxiety and depression meds... only on the supplements now. .. crying still comes but now i think of it as a coping mechanism which makes me feel better afterwards... i ll try taking it day by day like you said... my vision is still very bad and i still mostly lie in bed all day long but i try and think i will not be this miserable forever...

hopw you are doing okay benny. any improvement?

i dont wana scare you or anyone else here, but my brain MRI shows white matter and signal abnormalities and the lab report suggested differential diagnosis of an autoimmune condition or demyelination (damage to protective sheath over the nerves).. which my neuro doctor will have to confirm through a needle test tomorrow .. both mean nerve damage and i am not sure if there is a cure .. they say nerve damage in peripheral parts like hands, feet can be reversed but not those which happen in brain, spinal cord and the eyes.. i dont know if there are any meds to stop or reverse the damage and suffering i am going through..