Topic Title: Practical Advice: Cold-Turkey med reduction
| |  "Practical Advice: Cold-Turkey med reduction"
, Sat 19 Nov 00:19
Hey All:
I just wanted to remind folks (gosh really not trying to sound preachy), but I keep hearing about folks stopping AD's cold turkey. This includes friends of mine as well as folks I don't know out there in cyberspace.
I think there is still confusion about "stopping" SSRIs, SNRIs, and other Anti-depressants, even though there has been literature and even mainstream media attention now given to the reality that people have some detrimental, and sometimes very brutal and debilitating experiences when stopping "cold turkey".
There is practically no medication out there that you take for long periods of time that you don't taper off of. If you tapered it when you started it...then of course you would taper off it for the same exact reason.
For a while there was an assumption that SSRIs probably didn't cause withdrawal effects in a signifant way since they have a long half life, and stay in your body for a while anyway once you stop them and gradually your blood levels go down. However, even before withdrawals were discovered any good doc/psych would taper you off of them anyway. The discovery of the really nasty impacts that can happen when you suddenly stop were largely reported initially by people who did it on their own...and had horrible headaches, electrical shock sensations in their head, nausea, general crappy stuff.
Anyway...just don't stop these drugs cold turkey k :-)
If you want to stop heroine you definitely don't stop cold turkey...that is kind of a bad comparison because doing that would be life threatening. But even SSRIs which are not technically "habit forming" can give you a really bad jolt if you take them for a long period of time and then stop suddenly. I have a friend who was bedridden for weeks after stopping Effexor suddenly and finally took another "dose" and felt better. This is why you gradually reduce them.
Just like anything you do in life you don't start or stop anything suddenly. You don't run a marathon without months of working your way up to it :-)
Enough silly analogies...I just think that the idea of being "med free" is great...and hope people can acheive that who want to. The people I know who have successfully become med free never do it suddenly...(cold turkey) but carefully take steps to accomplish it with time.
I have tapered off drugs now...feel ok..but still waiting for the SJW to help. Hope it does for me and everyone here!!!!
Happy Friday
Peace
Posts: 7 | | Registered: Mon 7 Nov 2005 22:31 |
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| | "Forgot to say..this would apply to SJW too" , Sat 19 Nov 00:25
Forgot...that I would personally consider the tapering approach to be totally logical for SJW as well.
If I have success with SJW, and take 900-1200mg of the stuff for a year, and want to stop for some reason...I will absolutely taper off of it. Perhaps go to 600mg for week, 300 for a week, and then stop.
There isn't anything out there about any "withdrawal" from SJW....but really I just consider it logical that anything your body becomes accostomed to requires a period of re-adjustment. Anyway, just my philosophy which is based on others experiences as well as my own, when I stopped Wellbutrin for a week (cold turkey) and really got a jolt. Will never do that again.
Peace
Posts: 8 | | Registered: Mon 7 Nov 2005 22:31 |
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