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Reducing from 15mg to 10mg

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nick95548
nick95548

hey everyone, ive been on this website many times reading posts but havent made one before.

As a brief catch up of my situation i was put on 10mg citalopram around 6 years ago for anxiety and depression. Things got better really fast and i never thought to come off the meds.

The last year or so things got bad again and i eventually ended up going to 20mg. I was at that dose for around 6 months and just really wasnt working for me. I spoke to my doctor and he said just go back to 10mg. I know its best to come back down very slowly.

I went down to 15mg by taking a 10mg tablet and splitting a 20mg into quarters.

Have been on that for around 12 weeks and think its time to lower again.

ive started taking 15mg one day then 10mg the next and alternating each day so im balancing out at 12.5mg

ive been doing this for a week now but im not sure if the alrernating days is the right way to go.

Any advice on if i should try cut a pill down to 2.5mg so im taking 12.5 daily instead of alternate days? or maybe i should even just go straight down to 10?

I am not cured of anxiety or anything but felt i could handle it better on my original dose and would like to eventually come off them.

any time ive looked on this site KatieCogs(?) always seems to have great advice if she is still on this forum.

Anyway sorry my brief catch up has turned into a novel.

any advice would be greatly appreciated!

0 likes, 2 replies

2 Replies

  • gillian176
    gillian176 nick95548

    Edited

    Hi

    i did the reduction once over a year

    very slowly

    cutting the tablets

    I got 10 mg ones and would split like u but even tinier doses

    if its working for you fine

    i did 10/12.5/10/12.5 ....

    i ended up at 1.25 mg alternate days

    see my old blog Success on Citalopram

    however im back on it and suffering low mood in mornings

  • katecogs
    katecogs nick95548

    Posted

    Hi Nick

    Sorry for the long delay in replying - only just happened across your post.

    When I withdrew from meds I did it by 5mg reductions too - I never did alternating doses / days.

    I went from 20 / 15 / 10 / 5 / 2.5 / 1.25 / 0

    When I got to 5mg I couldn’t cut the pill anymore (spent ages looking on the floor at times) 😮 so I crushed the pill from thereon and divided the powder (felt like a drug baron) 😄. You can only guess how much powder is taken, but whatever is taken one day then I guess the other part will be made up the next day.

    When I got down to 1.25mg which was a miniscule amount of powder on the end of my finger, I then started taking that every other day for a week or so, then every 2 days etc, then every 3 days etc etc until I was taking the dose once a week. Then I stopped.

    How are you managing at the moment?

    K

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