Serotonin Syndrome
My daughter had to get off zoloft :( She took 11.5mg for 2 weeks and then increased the dose to 25mg. It worked fantastic for her.... but about a week into the 25mg, she started to complain of a very fast heart rate. Her resting was consistently 120-140. The next day she said she was really nauseous and she was having chills and hot flashes. We figured she may be coming down with something but she went to work anyway (she works in the filing dept of a business). She called me a few hours later saying she feels weird and asked me to pick her up. She said she feels like she cant sit down and needs to be moving. She was very restless and seemed like she was crawling out of her skin. Her hands and legs were shaking. Her heart rate was still in the 140 and her pupils looked blown. I called her doctor and they told us to stop the zoloft immediately, and called in some ativan for her to take until she could be seen the next day. Within the couple hours waiting to get the meds, she got worse and would swing from incredibly manic to balling her eyes out. She said it felt like every emotion rushing at her at once.
We went to Walmart and get her Ativan. The pharmacist even noticed how she was acting and I had to tell her shes having an adverse reaction to the zoloft, before they would release it.
The ativan helped significantly by nearly knocking her out. She was seen the next day and the doctor told her the symptoms should resolve as the zoloft leaves her system over the next few days. She got better each day, thankfully.
Shes on no other medications, not even otc. They say serotonin syndrome happens at higher doses, but it seems it can happen at lower ones as well.
Edit: Even though I am being down voted for talking about my daughters reaction, this is staying up. Informed consent is important and I will keep it up in case anyone else has similar symptoms. We were never told these reactions were a possibility.