u/aldosi-arkenstone

“If you bought a home within the past fifteen years you overpaid and your finances are cooked beyond salvage”

So on Week 5 of being on 20 mg (previously on 10). Felt some improvement Week 3, but it plateaued / regressed a bit in Week 4.

Now a few days into Week 5 I feel like it’s cratering hard. Morning anxiety is through the roof, edginess and dread are almost constant.

I’ve never experienced this before when upping my dose to 20mg before. Brain is telling me things like I have a bad batch of pills or a corrupted generic manufacturer … so yeah, that bad! Anyone else experienced this?

I've been on Lexapro and and off since 2007, with dosages ranging from 10mg - 30mg. In the past couple of years I had to start again and was on 20mg but had been able to reduce to 10mg for about a year recently.

In the past two weeks, I've had some personal issues that caused an anxiety spike. While those issues have moderated, my doctor and I decided to re-up my dosage to 20mg.

Since the dose increase. I've been experiencing the worst morning anxiety since - like almost to the point where I can't get out of bed. Cortisol levels through the roof. I don't evem remember it being this bad. Is this rise in cortisol levels normal for the first week or two after a dose increase?

P.S. - adding in some Klonopin (which I hate) has helped a bit there. We tried Busiprone in lieu of Klonopin, but that put me into a near panic attack for the few days I was on it since it raises cortisol levels