Omeprazole has ruined my life

you said you had GAD before too .. did you ever take xanax for it before? i am on xanax, antipsychotic and antidepressant due to the anxiety resulting from omeprazole.. but all they do is give me sleep.. they dont help much with the anxiety and depersonalization which came with it..recently i started consulting a therapist who has taught me to use cooing skills for panic attacks and they have helped so far.. but i am far far from ok even after 8 months if stopping omeprazole!

Oh yes before hand and still now I have severe GAD and agoraphobia. I had never taken any medications before as I have always been completely against them. It helped me to sleep for sure and eat. I hadn't slept more than 2 hours a night for the past two weeks and had also lost 13 pounds in the process. Now I am hungry and can sleep and I feel like it's helping me mentally. Of course my anxiety is still there like it's always been but it's really up to me to work on that. I know you're having a really rough go at it but you need to accept that yes the medication did exaggerate you GAD but it was there to begin with. Try and get out the cycle of why me and get into warrior mode. So what if I feel depersonalized I am going to go through my day because f*** it I won't always feel this way. I have found a lot of solice in watching "That Anxiety Guy" on youtube. I know it's really hard but I have noticed the more positive, consistent, and courageous I feel about beating this the better I feel. It's those bad days where I sit and ask why me why me why me that things get worse. The Xanax is obviously not a cure all but it's given me a piece of mind to know that yes I can feel okay for periods of time which means that yes I can beat this. I know that this medication has done horrible things for you but really we just need to take responsibility for creating our anxiety in the first place. We need to retrain our brains.

Also I'd like to point out that there is no magic pill, supplement, or trick that is going to fix our anxiety. It's going to be HARD work and is all going to have to take place in OUR brains to retrain ourselves that not everything is a threat and not everything is a danger.

ALSO....stay off the forums. Stop googling. Stop looking for answers. The more you try and compare your symptoms and ailments the to other people's the more you are going to sit and obsess over how you are feeling. I've learned this the hard way as I had been obessing every single day all day long on why I felt this way and seeking solice in seeing that other people were going through the same thing. Join a group on facebook for GAD but only one that is positive and uplifiting. Watch some success stories on youtube. There are so many people who have overcome this and I know we can too.

Thank you for your encouraging words.. you are right, negative thinking further aggravates the condition .. but its really taking all my courage to fight this .. i really need assurances from time to time that I won't be stuck like this forever... I so want to feel normal again.. miss my old self badly!

do you still take it?

how did you manage to come back to life and hold a job? the thought of going outside scares me.. i am always in a depersonalization/derealization mode which makes me detached from reality and its very painful.. how long did you take the ppi for?

I'm in a similar boat. a lot of health anxiety from the different symptoms that i have had from the use of a ppi. For me it was the extreme health anxiety about every little thing i was feeling. then i had this underarm pain that was a nagging pain. doctors suspected a muscle strain. fine. i took anti inflammatories on top of the ppis, and a round of anti biotics for a suspected chest infection. i had been having chest pains and coughing a bit. i also quit vaping around this time so i dont know if that had anything to do with it. needless to say. the ibuprophen and physical therapy and anti biotics didnt do anything for my arm or chest pain. the muscle pains started to getting worse. one day one of my butt cheeks would be sore like i had worked out one side. lol. then i would get these terrible squeezing arm and chest pains. sharp pains in my right back shoulder blade area. just agony. the type of constant pain that makes you absent minded because its all you think about. i quit omeprazole cold turkey about 3 weeks ago. november 14th i believe it was. the first two weeks i was having a lot of stomach issues including diarrhea every day. none of my side effects i had were going away. the muscle soreness was still there, joint pain and muscle cramps, i also woke up a few times and my right hand would be numb. after the two week point i seem to have improved a bit. some of the things i have been using are sublingual b12 1000mg 1-3 times a day. magnesium glycinate 400-600mg a day, fish oil, probiotics 30 mins after i eat and 1-2 digestive enzyme pills before a meal, zinc, and vitamin d. i also use dgl if the reflux gets bad and gaviscon advance before bed. the most important thing i have been doing is listening to my body. the things you eat and what makes you not feel good. try to figure out what caused your stomach to hurt or you to have reflux and lay off that food. as far as my anxiety and symptoms at this point, i still have bad days. im still very stiff feeling in my upper body as a 27 year old male. my anxiety isnt as bad and i use my xanax very sparingly and in small small doses. what else can i say. the only thing i can do is continue to take care of myself and hope my body heals. i am throwing a lot of stuff at this so im not sure what is working. i do know ppis deplete us of our vitamins and minerals so i am trying to replace all the things that PPIs can mess with. good luck to everyone. and id like to hear if anyone else had as many physical symptoms as they did mentally. and are they connected, like how much does anxiety play into our pain?

well i dont want to sound like a drama, but i am now coming to terms with the fact that i have been mentally handicapped for life.. just like an amputees leg never grows back, i know i wont get my mind back.. i am slowly accepting it and i am telling myself to not look back to the beautiful life i had before this.. comparing with that life hurts and puts me into more panic.. this is what has happened and i have to live with it.. live without my brain functioning properly .. denying me the little and big joys of life... thank you GOD, if there is any, for giving me everything and then taking it all away!

what are your anxiety symptoms? what do you really feel? do you feel disconnected and hopeless like you are totally different from before and the fear that you ll be like this forever? its the fear and hopelessness which make things even worse for me.. i start crying out of self pity and then it spirals out of control.. also i have a really long mental battle about doing small things like keeping my eyes open, moving, getting up, looking at my phone .. my mind is like do it, then its like no dont do it.. there is a fear associated wit h this inertia as if something ominous will happen if i make the slightest movement like opening my eyes.. thus i end up lying in bed in one position practically all day and it makes me cry to see what i have reduced to.. also i am very irritated and angry all the time.. about the physical pain, my body is stiff like a board when i wake up and with the fear combined, its a real struggle to move a finger even... i used to have a lot of pain in my feet when i started walking or when my mom touched my feet.. that has improved .. but now i cant stretch my legs which later cause my knees to hurt as lying in that curled up bent position puts really lot of pressure on my knees!

you know i cant really answer what comes first the chicken or the egg..but if anything i never had anxiety especially health anxiety thats why i took omeperazole so irresponsibly...ill definitely take my physical pain over my mental pain any day

you took the words right out of my mouth... i ll take any and every physical pain over this mental anguish.. i have no words for it..

i already had anxiety before i went on omeprazole. omeprazole just made it worse. i couldnt eat very well, couldnt sleep well, and i was constantly worried that my illness was something more serious like cancer. it became very difficult to swallow at one point because i was having esophageal spasms. i was convinced that i had esophageal cancer, i was convinced i had throat cancer, stomach cancer, etc. then when i started getting all the pains on my right side i was convinced i had lung cancer. i was out on anti depressants for the first time before even though my anxiety in the past had always been manageable. the anti depressants made me very zombie like so i quit them thinking they were the main problem. they werent. after i stopped taking them i was still in pain i just didnt feel as much like a zombie and my balance got a bit better. i eventually came to the conclusion that it had to be the omeprazole. i had been taking it for about 5 months or so. i gained a lot of weight back, weight that i had lost earlier in the year. but i didnt gain any energy, my pain gradually worsened, and i started to get extremely irritable with people and stressed extremely easily. im only slowly getting better almost 3 weeks off of them. what i can tell you about anxiety is that it gets worse the more you sit in it. i still have xanax to use when im particularly stressed but this is a drug you must be very careful with. its good to get up and see how far you can walk out of your house each day. each day try to go a little farther. and maybe youll start to realize that you can get better. ive been in very dark places before. im no master and i still have issues, but you will be amazed at how strong you are if you just try a little harder each day, not all at once! good luck benny.

no i havent taken it in 5 years

i am posting this link here for everyone on this forum... everyone of us is going through a mix of neurological and psychiatric issues and this might be helpful... i am now wondering if i was diagnosed correctly with panic and anxiety in the first place.. whatever it is, i am pretty sure omeprazole messed up my neurosystem which manifested into panic, anxiety and derealisation... i dont know if i should be happy or sad knowing omeprazole gave me something bordering on epilepsy and anxiety.. who knows i might be having seizures which were mistaken for panic attacks all this time.. my last hope is to now go to a neurologist and confirm seizures ..

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as time is passing, i am getting to know more about my various issues.. for a long period of time, i couldnt realize i had muscle/nerve/movement issues .. i just focused on the anxiety.. but now that i am re-reading the above comments and after focusing on my suffering, i have come to know that anxiety is linked somehow to the muscle/nerve issues.. for me, mornings are worst too... i feel like a stiff board in my shoulders and i cant even stretch my legs.. i have to put in a lot of effort to get up and move.. when i start moving, i am afraid to sit down as i know it would be an uphill battle to get up again.., i have tremors all over my body too.. the muscles in my thigh wont ever stop contracting and twitching .. even if i make a conscious effort to relax them, they are back contracting in a few moments.. i feel like the anxiety is stemming from this movement or muscle/nerve disorder i developed due to omeprazole.. i have lot of health anxiety too and reading up about all sorts of neuro issues, MS, functional neurological disorder which is a mix of neuro and psychiatric issues but unfortunately have no cure except psychotheray with little success.. i can relate to another comment here which mentioned that the anxiety began around the time of shoulder stiffness..