u/thedepartedstarship

So first of all, I'm aware that doing this cold turkey was a bad idea. Not my first rodeo, either, I'm afraid. That said, I simply could not handle what Zoloft was doing to me anymore.

I've on a high dose of 250mg for a few years and what I thought for a long time was the drug working was just me losing my sense of self.

I really thought I had no side effects either but now that I'm off, oh boy. I had turned into a literal zombie, losing interest in just about everything I used to love to do. My anxiety was maybe mostly gone but it did come with a price. Having lived most of my life inside my own head, all of those thoughts shutting up felt like a miracle at first. But that also meant that every other thought was just as gone, too. I simply didn't care about anything. I didn’t have an opinion about anything. Everything was just 'whatever'.

Just like starting Zoloft, the first few weeks of quitting felt absolutely amazing. But now I find myself sinking deeper into my depression and I'm finding it difficult to differentiate if it's just the withdrawals or am I getting bad again. Either way, I'm not touching Zoloft or any other SSRI again.

I just really don’t know how to handle these mood swings after having felt practically nothing for a good two years. It's starting to mess with my head in a way I'm almost getting suicidal. The one thing that gladly stops me is my own rationality, knowing this could very well be just a symptom of my bad choice of not tapering off. I don’t really trust any of these feelings.

Mostly came here to vent, but I would be interested to hear if anyone here has been having same issues as me. Either before or after quitting. And most importantly, did it eventually get any better?

(I'm also not here to hate on SSRIs. I know they help a lot of people. They helped me for the time being, too. Most people don't ever get to struggle with them the way I did. Just sharing my own experience.)

I have two Jack Russel Terriers. One is 11 years old and has always been calm around cats. Our newest addition 1,5 yo on the other hand has always been obsessing about the cats.

The weird part is that my cats are outdoor cats, and when we go for a walk and they come up to us, everything is perfectly fine. They sniff each other and remain calm.

However, once inside, all hell breaks loose. He chases them, and once they hop into their safe place on the top of the fireplace, he won't stop barking at them. The transition to letting the cats inside had become impossible, usually requiring me to carry them inside.

I'm looking for some advice where does this stem from, and any tips on how to make the situation better. She has a prey drive for sure, but somehow in this case it's backwards from any tips I've read, since the problem is with cats outdoors.