• BASIC DRUG
    DISCUSSION
    Welcome to Bluelight!
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Benzo Chart Opioids Chart
    Drug Terms Need Help??
    Drugs 101 Brain & Addiction
    Tired of your habit? Struggling to cope?
    Want to regain control or get sober?
    Visit our Recovery Support Forums
  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards | negrogesic

"treatment" for SSRI withdrawal head shocks?

D

deceased fire

Bluelighter
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
148
if anyone could help with this i would be so freaking grateful.

i want to stop taking celexa as i've been on it for years - have weaned myself off of it so far and now take 1/2 a pill everyday.

i've missed a couple of doses and am getting those crazy headshocks. i'm wondering if i should refill my scrip and start taking quarter pills or just tough it out for the week or so i hear that these bastards last?

i took gravol to knock me out and smoked a joint of kush. is there anything i can do to make these bastard headshocks go away??

8(
 
They'll go away eventually, but as far as when depends on how much you were taking and for how long.

I'm not familiar with Celexa, but if it's anything like Effexor (very short half-life), then you have my sympathy. I've never been on Effexor personally, but have had a friend go through it's withdrawals and it wasn't pretty.

Anyway, if you don't want to wait it out then I would advise getting another script and tapering very slowly.
 
I never had celexa but i'm taking cymbalta. tried going cold turkey off of them but stopped because of those head shocks. They fucking suck eggs. everything i tried to over come them didn't work, it just kept coming back. even using OCs didn't help much. Eventually I started taking the cymbalta again because i'm a pussy.

But ya i think you should get your prescription refilled and taper off of them slowly, like you said taking quarters of them.
 
yea i gotta tell you, i came off mine in february and it sucked... i didnt find anything that helped. sometimes herb helped when it got bad but thats it.... trust me though it does get better, you have to be patient....
 
and btw, i say dont go back onm it, your on such a low dose now why prolong it, i say stick through it till the end. those low doses will just keep little bits of it in your system longer
 
The "head shocks", sometimes called "brain zaps" are a typical withdrawal symptom of SSRIs such as Celexa.

The best thing to do is a very slow taper. If you've been on it for years, then your taper shedule should last weeks.
Taper to 1/2pill/day for 10 days, then 1/4 pill for another 10 days.
Take your time.

If you can't get SSRIs, or don't want to get some, then you could buy some OTC Diphenhydramine, which is a weak SSRI, and use it for the withdrawals.
(very recently, a poster here in Other Drugs had to withdraw from Tramadol, which acts as a SSRI. The withdrawal symptoms included body/brain zaps/shocks; he used Diphenhydramine and it worked very well)
 
I experienced an entire month of SSRI-withdrawal after stopping Zoloft cold-turkey. I have always wondered if LSD would work for this issue? Not that I recommend anything so drastic for SSRI-withdrawal (especially if you have never tripped before). But, it is a broad-spectrum 5-HT receptor agonist/antagonist with different effects on different subtypes of receptor, so it might be worth investigating. If it did work (acute dosing), then we could start testing out different types of 5-HT receptor selective ligands (5-TH1a, 1d/f, 2a/c, 3, etc...).
 
Like the previous posters, I believe that the head-shocks will go away with time. That, and taking super-good care of yourself. Stay hydrated, eat well. Drink more anyway, and make sure you are getting enough to eat. I also agree with the slow-taper approach; halve the dose each week, until there is nothing left to halve. Good luck to you, and hang in there!
Laci
 
Hmm I've gone off SSRIs cold turkey...never had anything that bad happen. Some withdrawal was actually kinda pleasant (when i came off cymbalta).

The only time I did was when i was already suicidal, and then came off cold turkey for the highest doses of paxil cr and wellbutrin xl. Then i went nuts. haha

Stop being a pussy. If you really think they are that bad go ahead and try the diphen I guess.
 
yes, it IS easy to discredit something you've never experienced. yawn.

thank you everyone for your constructive comments and kind words.

fyi i felt much better after taking 2 t3's and smoking 2 joints of really good kush.

but i caved and refilled the scrip: am going to take half a day for the next 2 weeks and then try 2/3 or a 1/4.

thanks again, i wish you all good mental health!
 
sounds like you got a plan laid out, and thats a big part of it. its reassuring to know its gonna work out, cuz trust me it will.


and fyi, 2/3 is more than 1/2


good luck!
 
SSRI physical withdrawal is a very real problem, on high doses of SSRIs the WD can be longer and worse then opiate WD. I have known more than one person who went back on their SSRI and stayed on simply because they couldn't take the WD symptoms that can last for up to a month, and one guy had gone cold turkey from a percocet and OC habit. The pharmaceutical industry has done a great job covering this up, a lot of physicians RXing SSRIs like candy don't even know about it. The pharms cringe at the word withdrawal and its drug abuse associations, so they obfuscate and play down the problem by calling it "discontinuation symptoms" or "use cessation symptoms". Nice huh? Wonder what heroin's public perception would be with a team of pharm industry public relations and image consultants behind it, probably be considered safer then mothers milk. SSRI WD can be a big problem when traveling or in a disaster, or in any situation where RX SSRI might be hard to come by.

So just as a matter of interest and for anyone in the future researching this I'd be interested if anyone knows of any uncontrolled substances that can act as SSRIs?

I know St. Johns Wort the herb is considered to be a weak SSRI, is it the hypericin it contains?
DXM is also supposed to be a SSRI to a small extent, but the needed doses might go into psychoactive territory and thats not desireable.
Tramadol acts both on opiate receptors and as a SSRI, but that could be trading one problem for another if used regularly.

Any others?
 
I don't think you want to go on hard chemistry withdrawing from SSRIs. Herbal solutions might turn out best. And what's up with selectivity with DXM and tramadol? They aren't selective for serotonin reuptake in any way. Anyway, their primary effects overwhelm serotonin alteration.
 
One way: decrease dosage yet slower- there's always a way for that.

One way to do it:
Decrease dosage yet slower than you did up to now.

First: increase dosage until zaps stop.

Second: Decrease slow over a long time.

Half pills, quarter pills, eight of pills / per day / per second day / per third day..

That did it for me with Zoloft. After taking the first and second step, the zaps were gone for good right until i was off the stuff (after a month or so).

To sum it up: zaps are unneccessary. Basically it's very easy: if you get zaps you are decreasing dosage yet to fast per amount of time.
 
You could also switch to St Johns Wort extract, which contain Hypericine, which is a weak SSRI.
Then taper with it....
It's an OTC supplement.
 
thank you both for your suggestions.

Legalize: that's what i'm going to do - i found some info online about cutting my pills and putting them in orange juice. congrats for getting yourself off that evil zoloft.

for anyone else dealing with this: two important things are not to skip a day (like my ancient doctor said i should) and that you may need up to 2 weeks at a dose level before decreasing.

fucking bastard doctors who prescribed me these without mentioning anything and fucking me for not getting to know what i was getting into!!!
 
deceased fire said:
fucking bastard doctors who prescribed me these without mentioning anything and fucking me for not getting to know what i was getting into!!!
Click to expand...

You can thank the pharm companies for that one...I swear they push new pills on doctors like a sleazy car salesman pushes sketchy deals on naive customers. I've personally sat in my doctor's lobby and watched as 2 different sales reps from seperate pharm companies tried to get him to push their pills.

It's disgusting how much more concerned they are with profit than the actual well-being of the people they're trying to help.
 
totally - but i'm seriously pissed at my doctor too.

when i first mentioned the head shocks his reaction was very blase like "of course you have head shocks, you're withdrawing from a medication you're addicted to".

and THEN he laughed at me when i told him i've been reducing by a quarter pill saying "oh you don't have to decrease that slowly to avoid head shocks" even though i TOLD HIM i was getting them.

and THEN he suggested i skip days (one quarter pill every other day) to wean myself off when all the literature i've read says this is a bad idea.

ancient, outdated doctors = product of the canadian healthcare system.

don't believe the SICKO hype - canada's no healthcare utopia :(
 
CANCEL EVERYTHING EVERYONE HAS TOLD YOU ALREADY

and take Omega-3 it made mine go away completely then when I had them again I just took more Omega-3 (8-12hrs later) and it helps ALOT
 
^^^^^ Yes mr.expert sure just take your word for it and noone elses.

Anyway i never went through ssri withdrawal as ive never been on one but i have been through snri withdrawal when i went off effexor. It has the same symptoms as ssri withdrawal only much worse i think. It was hell it made opiate withdrawals feel like sex. I went cold turkey off it because this was years ago before anyone really acknowledged that anti-depressants caused dependency. My doctor never mentioned a goddamn thing about how bad the withdrawals where i felt like killing the bastard.

Anyway celexa withdrawals shouldnt be nearly as bad as effexor withdrawals as effexor is considered to have the worst withdrawal symptoms out of any psychiatric drug by many people.

Some people find that tapering off using prozac works well for ssri withdrawals because of it's really long half life. It gives your brain more time to adjust to the reduction of serotonin level then the ssri's with shorter half lifes. Most people i know who came off prozac reported little or no withdrawals. Also diphenhydramine and benzos help abit too.

When i came off effexor i used temazepam for sleep and to calm me down and weed. Weed seemed to help alot for some reason. I think thats all i used but this was a long time ago so im not too sure. I remember my withdrawls lasted about 2 weeks and i had only been on the effexor for about 2 months or so.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top