Buspirone: depressive symptoms, mood swings, derealization and sleep problems after stopping/reducing?
I’m taking buspirone for anxiety/panic/health anxiety. I took it for about 7 weeks and increased the dose irregularly: 2.5 mg, 5 mg, 7.5 mg, 10 mg and finally around 15 mg daily for about 5 days. During that time, I had no improvement in my anxiety, mainly just sleep problems.
Then I stopped it abruptly for about 3–4 days. On day 3/4, I suddenly developed strong depressive mood, increased anxiety, intrusive suicidal thoughts without intent, hopelessness, derealization/unreal feelings and strong mood swings.
After that I restarted inconsistently: about 7 days with changing doses between 5 and 20 mg, then 8 days on 10 mg, 10 days on 7.5 mg, 1 day on 6.25 mg, and now about 8–9 days on 5 mg daily, split into 2.5 mg morning and 2.5 mg evening. This whole state has now been going on for about 5 weeks.
I feel like every dose reduction made things worse. Especially since being on 5 mg, my sleep problems, early waking, racing thoughts, emotional numbness, derealization/depersonalization, anxiety, brain fog, head pressure/headaches and depressive feelings have gotten stronger.
Before buspirone, I had never felt like this and never had these depressive/depression-like symptoms. I already saw my GP, but he referred me to a psychiatrist; my appointment is only in about 3 weeks. I honestly don’t want to take buspirone anymore.
Has anyone experienced this with buspirone or after abruptly stopping/restarting it, even at low doses? And why could every dose reduction make it feel worse instead of better????