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I know someone who insists that her life was saved by escitalopram. However, please be aware that SSRIs are not necessarily free to try, physiologically nor socially speaking. I tried it at the recommendation of my doctor for anxiety. It did not help, and the side effects (lack of empathy, weight gain despite loss of appetite, and others) worsened my situation and strained friendships. However, my real issues began when I tried to _stop_ taking it. I've experienced opiate withdrawal from pain medication, which was enough to make me sympathetic toward heroin addicts, but SSRI withdrawal was by far the worst I've ever experienced. I used SSRIs for 3 months, but it took 6+ months to wean myself off of them due to debilitating "brain zaps". I got the lowest dosage pills and shaved them onto a milligram scale. I crushed them and dissolved them into a titration solution so that i could wean myself more slowly. I read about psychiatrist claims that SSRI withdrawal "brain zaps", which, it turns out, are known to affect some people, are benign because they "only last a fraction of a second". That may be true for a single zap, but when they occur once every five, ten, or twenty seconds, it's a different story. When these "zaps" occurred, not only was it disorienting, but it felt like I missed half a second of time, and when they got bad, a substantial brain fog set in. They destroyed my focus, and i couldn't get much work done. Driving became dangerous: I would simply miss the existence of entire cars, and I had a few close calls before I realized what was going on and refused to drive any longer while in that state. Weaning more slowly would keep the zaps at bay, but once they began on a given day, it was too late, and my day was over: taking more escitalopram at that point would help, but only gradually over the course of the day. My withdrawal reaction isn't shared by most, but from my research, it also isn't so rare. I fully recognize that SSRI meds help many people, but be wary about trying them "just to see if it helps," and be aware that once your body gets accustomed to them, coming off of them may not be the experience that your doctor described. |