• The Dark Side 💕 Welcome Guest 💕
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Notable Threads Urgent Hotlines
    Bereavement Mindfulness
    Suicide Support Anger Management
  • TDS Moderators: AlphaMethylPhenyl | Eligiu | deficiT

Mental Health Coming off of lexapro and starting zoloft?

U

Unregistered420

Guest
I asked my doctor for a script of Zoloft since the lexapro I was on stopped working. My doctor told me that I should start the 50mg zoloft immediately. When I picked up the Zoloft from the pharmacy the pharmacist told me how since I was taking 20mg of lexapro that I should cut back on the lexapro first for about a week and then start the zoloft.

Which person is correct? I have been slowly cutting back the lexapro taking 15mg for the last 4 days. When should I start the zoloft? Is it safe to take both the zoloft and lexapro at the same time the pharmacist mentioned this taking a lower dose of the lexapro and the full 50mg of the zoloft at the same time.
 
Wow this is crazy, I only just recently had someone in real life tell me they had this same experience of a pharmacist contradicting a doctor basically IN THIS EXACT SAME WAY! Seriously, WHAT THE HELL??!! And this is FAR from the first time I've heard of this.....docs and pharmacists are not on same page AT ALL.....

My suggestion would be to call your doctor's office straight away and discuss this contradiction, discuss the two different suggestions and figure out which is actually best. I'd recommend doing this before taking EITHER course of action.

RIDICULOUS.

-PA
 
reply-coming off lexapro and starting zoloft?

in reply to here: http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/832655-Coming-off-of-lexapro-and-starting-zoloft

PA I did call my doctor and was told to just start taking the zoloft. It took a few days to hear back so I had done what the pharmacist suggested and slowly cut back on the lexapro since I have been on it for awhile.

I talked to a family friend who is a doctor and they told me how I should cut back on the lexapro until I am at 5 or 10mg, and then start taking the Zoloft at 25mg for a week and then work my way up to the dose of 50mg.
 
In the future, just create your thread once. Someone will get to it. Otherwise it's just more work for moderators with no real benefit. Thanks...

You should feel free to express your genuine thoughts/feelings to your doctor, but they're the only one who should be telling you what to take, how much to take, and so on
 
It's a pharmacist's job to be aware of drug interactions and dosages, and they're trained to catch mistakes, so it's always best to take their word first on these issues. Physicians have reasons to go off-label sometimes, so it doesn't always mean there's a problem.

Your pharmacist knows that escitalopram has a long half-life, so there's still a lot of it in your brain if you start the zoloft right away, which would cause side effects as if you'd doubled your Lexapro dose suddenly. That's all she meant by it. Your physician figures meh, you won't mind with low doses.

Another reason to wait is how do you know a sudden effect is due to the sertraline and not from stopping the escitalopram? But that's not too likely, same as the risk of having withdrawals, which is the reason your friend mentioned a taper.

Having done plenty of Zoloft, I wouldn't have bothered waiting or tapering, basically what your physician said.

But they're both SSRIs, so the question is why the sertraline would help when the escitalopram "stopped" working. About the only difference I can find involves the mysterious sigma-1 receptor, which sertraline antagonizes, and escitalopram seems to ignore.

SO when you say your med stopped working, what do you mean exactly?
 
Good to hear OP, sounds like you got it figured out and it worked out well.

On another note, Scrofula is correct to an extent though- doctors aren't usually trained very well on medications, unfortunately (at least in the US)....it's nice when they've actually thought some pharm courses would be worthwhile.....but not many do.

-PA
 
reply-coming off lexapro and starting zoloft?

I meant that the lexapro stopped working as I started noticing I was getting a lot more anxiety and some depression, and I have been on it for years. I told my doctor this and seeing as 20mg of lexapro is the largest dose my doctor is comfortable prescribing me I switched back to Zoloft which I had taken more than a decade ago which worked well for me. I quit taking it then because I did not like how it made me sleepy as one of the side effects.

My doctor did reccomend me taking Effexor but I have heard bad things about that medication and I was on Wellbutrin before and did not like the stimulant like side effects of it so I opted for taking Zoloft again. I am not on any benzos as they are highly addictive.
 
Okay that's the second time you duplicated this thread. Again and I;ll have to take administrative action
 
Well, sounds like you've tried a few things.

I've never noticed a sleepiness difference with my sertraline timing, and I've experimented with morning v. evening doses, but I figure you've already tried mixing that up.

Venlafaxine/Effexor is an SSRI but has some weak norepinephrine action. I've noticed a rather dramatic (positive) change with my mother after she switched from long-term citalopram, but that's an anecdote of one. If you've heard scare stories about withdrawal, it's best to ignore them. I think most people's SSRI withdrawal effects are due purely to expectations. That said, if you didn't like bupropion/Welbutrin's stimulating effects, you probably want to avoid venlafaxine.

There are other things out there. If anxiety is the main concern, there's clonidine and guanfacine. They're a bit sedating at first, but work sort of opposite to how bupropion does. There's buspirone/Buspar, and mirtazapine, which both work differently then all the previous. And always supplementation with drugs like aripiprazole, or quetiapine, but adding more drugs always seems like a last resort to me.

You probably discussed all these already, but just in case you hadn't, there's a lot more available now for anxiety and depression than SSRIs or SNRIs. And good call avoiding benzos. That stuff really does have nightmarish withdrawal.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top