Prozac (fluoxetine): Tapering Down/Off

I just called my doctor and explained to her that I thought that I was getting too manic and having physical and psychological neurological overstimulation issues because I am on too much Prozac. I thought that she would suggest I lower the dose of Prozac from 40mg to 30mg. She advised me to discontinue the entire 40 mg of Prozac that I am on immediately. I tried to briefly explain to her the horrible ramifications of doing that, and gave her an extremely brief explanation of hypersensitivity, withdrawal, and titration. She said she wasn’t really following me and asked me "what did I want her to do?".

I was so incensed by this that I told her just call in a prescription for me for three months of 20mg and 10mg Prozac (it does not come in 30mg) so that I could cut down to 30mg from 40mg.

OMFG. She is now officially just my drug supplier and I have nothing else to say to her.

Have you ever stopped prozac and gotten these side effects? It sounds like you are getting these bcuz you are taking the prozac. I was on that shit for 2 months and it sucked my emotion away (not that i am real emotional to begin with) but when i stopped it completely it took a bit and then returned to normal.

Why dont you stop taking that stuff? Never heard of anyone being physically addicted to it. How long have you been taking it?

XThexXTank said:

Have you ever stopped prozac and gotten these side effects? It sounds like you are getting these bcuz you are taking the prozac. I was on that shit for 2 months and it sucked my emotion away (not that i am real emotional to begin with) but when i stopped it completely it took a bit and then returned to normal.

Why dont you stop taking that stuff? Never heard of anyone being physically addicted to it. How long have you been taking it?

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The Prozac is causing these side effects. You cannot just go off it or you will be in severe Serotinin Discontinuation Syndrome. This is life threatening and can do permanent brain damage even if you reinstate. You usually have to reinstate at a higher dose than you were originally on and start a much slower taper all over again. You could be taking it for a a few months, a year, or many years and the risk of SDS is still there, particularly if you are on a higher dose. But the longer you take it the higher the risk of SDS when coming off of it. Withdrawal symptoms are the same as benzos.

SDS sucks i had no choice but to cold turkey it going on cipralex(escitolrpram) cuz i couldnt afford my meds atm no insurance heh that was no fun at all weaning off it definatly key. right now im weaning off Effexor which is worse and cross tapering to setraline and it hasn been that bad minus withdrawing from down at same time (tryingto cut back) main thing is try to wean off and youll be ok. hope this helps.

Stopping Prozac cold turkey, is she having a laugh! If I even forgot and missed my morning dose of Venlafaxine and went to work I'd fucking know about it by lunch time! Felt like I had flu and would have to call a cab home so I can re-dose, after a few hours when it kicked in I felt much better. Some people just don't understand how dependant your body gets on SSRI's/SNRI's etc... I cannot believe her attitude towards that, not only is it horrible to endure, it's so unsafe!

What are your plans after Prozac? If you're jumping to another SSRI you can make the jump straight away (with some difficulty) without completely tapering off of the Prozac. Prozacs tricky because you can't get 5mg pills. Unlike tapering from Diazepam which comes in 10mg, 5mg and 2mg and the 2mg's even have a line for scoring them in half to 1mg so they're great for tapering nice and slowly, or at whatever rate you feel.

Have you thought about using Prozac in liquid form for tapering? Means you can measure out your dose in ml's and knock of however many ml's you feel comfortable doing, without making them jump straight from 40 to 30 to 20 to 10... it's just a bit smoother.

You're fully within your right to feel aggrieved by what she's said to you. I honestly can't believe that...!

Yes, she is quite the uneducated, non understanding, and incompetent ass. However, she is not alone in her field. I have found plenty just like her although not as stupid as to tell someone who just came out of approximately ten months of major depression and flipped manic in one day due to a trigger (caffeine) and the offending SSRI (Prozac) which is making the mania even worse to just cut the 40mg of Prozac all at once.

You should have seen what she did to me when she started me on trazodone for sleep. Normal dosage is 25mg-50mg at bedtime. She started me on 50mg and told me to wait seven days and if I was not getting a full nights sleep to up the dose to 100mg and if that did not work then in another seven days to up the dose to 150mg at bedtime. First of all you never use Prozac and trazodone at the same time, and second of all it takes a lot longer than seven days for it to take effect, and lastly at 150mg it is now a full blown SARI potentiating the Prozac thus causing even more mania. Unfortunately at the time I was not coherent enough to see what she was doing to me. Now I am stuck on trazodone and all of its nasty side effects, including making the mania and cognitive function worse until I can stabilize on the Prozac, take a long hold and see if I am going to continue the taper of Prozac or switch to a taper of trazodone for a while.

My plan right now is to do a slow taper of Prozac down from 40mg to 30mg by combining one 20mg capsule and one 10mg capsule and making up the difference needed by using liquid. I will cut three times which put me at 30mg and then I will hold for a long period and see how I am doing and reevaluate at that time.

Rebel Maven said:

My plan right now is to do a slow taper of Prozac down from 40mg to 30mg by combining one 20mg capsule and one 10mg capsule and making up the difference needed by using liquid. I will cut three times which put me at 30mg and then I will hold for a long period and see how I am doing and reevaluate at that time.

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I think that's a good plan mate. You can have a lovely drawn up plan to follow but in reality you just have to drop it down and see how you're coping and re-evaluate how you're feeling at each drop and just keep on doing that. I've had lovely detailed taper plans that I've spent ages formulating that have gone out the window on day 3 because it's really not a mathematical science that can be calculated. You can't do anything but just cut down and re-evaluate how you're coping at every time you adjust your dose.

Best of luck buddy, hope it all goes smoothly for you!