Sertraline: 5 months of hell, please help.

Treatment and medication
1

Apologies for the long post, I'll try and keep this brief as I can as its quite a long story.

I've been off and on Sertraline for anxiety and depression for years with minimal (though I gradually increasing) side effects. Early this Jan (2018) I went back on them after suffering from a bout of anxiety /depression and general lack of pleasure/joy at stuff. At first things felt pretty typical everything was following the normal pattern for me and gradually getting better then two weeks into the episode (and a few days after I went back on sertraline) I felt the meds 'kick in'. I was very stupid and went straight onto 150mg. Aside from physical side effects I got a huge spike of anxiety, agitation, depressed mood, suicidal thoughts, brainfog depersonalisation and I felt an odd kind of restless tension/crushing feeling in my brain where i kept having to move my feet (Im not sure if its akathisia?). It felt like a whole different 'level' almost like it wasn't part of me, id never felt like it before.

My GP aside from taking a case history and reassuring me that because i didnt have a difficult childhood that id probably "just recover"(!) prescribed propranolol for my anxiety (which despite making me feel tired/weak has actually killed my anxiety amazingly ). I then at a later apointment told him that I thought that the meds might be making things worse/causing the spike and that I'd like to taper off. He said that I could taper off once I began to feel better. Which seemed like frustratingly circular logic to me.

I have persevered hoping things would improve and have spent months only feeling worse and worse, depressed to.the point where icant even imagine feeling happy or good about anything and all the while with the weird tension in my skull feeling like piano wire slicing my brain. As weird as it sounds i wanted to rip my skeleton out of my mouth at times. Ive slowly realised that i have to get off these meds and have slowly tapered down(as quickly as i dare) im curently reducing by 25mg every two weeks and im due to.go down to 50mg this friday. My Dr is aware and has referred me to a mental health unit for an assessment in June. I the mean time I think the akathisia is much reduced though the depression and brainfog remain. Its very weird and hard to know what i feel. Its like i dont 'feel' my feelings im just somehow 'aware' of them, like im a machine on auto pilot. I do know that I'm extremely depressed, its like being in a hole with no light. I dont know if im doimg the right thing by tapering off, i really hope so. It feels like the fight of my life. Im sorry for the long post i just had to tell someone. If anyone has a similar story or advice please let me know.

2

Hi Vincent.  Your story sounds awful.  I’m sure you already know that a sudden dose as high as you took is the reason for such extreme reaction.  That’s a whopping shock to your brain so I can only imagine how terrifying you must have found it.  You don’t say if you remained on that high dose? It sounds to me like you need to be on an anti depressant so I don’t understand why your gp is taking you off it unless he perhaps wants to try a different med.   there is nothing more scary than feeling the kind of desperation you describe and it is a very lonely place to be but you are not alone and other people are experiencing the horrible feelings too so please try and stay positive and hopeful that with the right meds and support you will get back to normality.   We all have to believe in that.   Sorry I can’t help you much more than this.  

3

Hello Vincent, I can identify with some of the hell you are going through.

If you jumped from 50mg to 150 mg?  then that is too big a transition and probably caused some of your side effects. The needing to move, either part of your body or pacing up and down is one of them. Derealism is slightly different and may be why you can’t feel, a bit detached from them.

I have been at a

time of wanting to pull out a dental implant!! having paid a lot of money to to gain it.

I take it that your GP does not specialise in mental health!! the fact that you didn’t have a difficult childhood is not really relevant to your here and now.UNLESS you have somehow suppressed past trauma and it is surfacing now.

Do you have a depression and anxiety service near to you? This can often be a walk in service, tell your GP if you can no longer cope, thinking the blackest thoughts, so the Crisis team can intervene. 

You are in need of urgent help to cope with these frightening symptoms. 

You could think about plateauing with your meds instead of decreasing so that you brain has time to stabilise.

You cannot be allowed to suffer this on your own.

Eve 

4

Thanks Laura. I think my GP has deferred the problem by referring me to the mental health unit, which is fair enough. He simply said I could tape down "once I feel better", but it's been 5 months and I still feel very bad, enough really is enough.

All I think I can do is continue with the taper until I come off and hopefully go back to how I was before all this began except this time I'll have the propranolol as well. I'd give anything just to feel 'normal' again even if my version of normal was a bit crumby sometimes. I'm not against trying other drugs, but I'm through with sertraline. I just hope this mental health referral means I get some help/advice, perhaps even some kind of treatment. I feel very alone in this.