r/ADprotractedwithdrawl

I am in month 15 and my last symptom is depression. I have read a lot of success stories but wondering if anyone has links to one where someone's last renaming symptom in WD was depression and eventually it lifted.

Because this is such a "regular" symptom I keep getting this fear that this is just how I am without meds.

I went on meds for OCD never depression but still I am so fearful I will spend the rest of my life like this.

Hi everyone,

About 3 weeks ago I stopped taking Clomipramine 75mg retard/extended release after using it for around 2 years. Unfortunately, I had to stop it abruptly because my doctor said there was no other option and I couldn’t taper off.

Since then, I’ve been struggling a lot with intense anger, irritability, emotional instability, and mood swings. Small things make me extremely angry and I don’t feel like myself at all. It’s honestly pretty overwhelming.

Has anyone here gone through something similar after stopping Clomipramine or another TCA suddenly? How long did these withdrawal symptoms last for you, and did things gradually improve?

I’d really appreciate hearing about your experiences.

I'm 41/f
I started Velafaxine in Sept 2024 after having terrible anxiety. I was on 75 mg and was doing good, but gained about 20 lbs. Hating my weight gain I started weaning myself off in Jan of 2026. I took 10 beads out every week until I got to the middle of March. I don't know why, but I just stopped getting my refills (so stupid I know and I fully regret it) I did great and felt great until the past couple of weeks (May 2026). My anxiety is back and I'm panicky. I can't eat, sleep and I'm barely functioning. I didn't think it was due to withdrawing until I read something in Reddit and it clicked that that's what this probably is. I read the post on Survivingantidepressants.org about reinstating and I took 5 beads today (there are 246 in a 75mg capsule) from a bottle I found in my medicine cabinet. I've  tried reading more posts about reinstating but my mind is mush and I can't concentrate. I tried making an account on there to ask for help, but they're not allowing new accounts at the moment. Please help me, do I reinstate? Am I reinstating a good amount? What else can i do? I'm desperate. Please help me, I don't feel like I'll survive this feeling of doom and panic. I have 3 kids, a husband, and a farm to help take care of, I've got to find some way to get through this

I’m 12 months out from a bad reinstatement injury. This entire time I’ve been having extreme adrenaline surges which sometimes turn into adrenaline storms where I can’t control myself and literally cannot stand being in my own body. I can’t seem to find anyone with these symptoms. My other symptoms have dropped off like DP/DR, anhedonia…etc. I’m just stuck with these and they are debilitating and they keep me from sleeping and being able to function normally. Does anyone have these?

Hi all,

Are there people here who also don’t feel any emotion anymore? Just completely flatlined all the time? I felt blunting on the medication, that’s why I wanted to come off of it. After stopping I felt okay for 2,5 months, but after that I slowly completely lost all my emotions.

I can’t feel fear or anxiety anymore. Also sadness is not there. Just constantly flatlined. It’s like I am on a heavy mood stabilizer. I feel drugged and can’t wake up. The connections in brain to my emotions are just completely off. All I feel is pressure and fog.

I miss so much out on life. I even start to avoid social stuff because I can’t stand to see normal people with normal emotions and brains. Even the effects of alcohol and caffeine are blunted (avoid it now). I don’t feel human, I feel like a robot. My entire brain feels different and altered.

It’s been already 7,5 months since my last dose and I only took an SSRI for just 7 weeks total last summer 😞…

I can’t believe this has happened to me after such a short amount of time. I was always very sensitive, motivated and emotional. A HSP type of person. I feel like a robotic psychopath and not like myself AT ALL.

I’ve read about PSSD and people suffer from years. I can’t do that… 😔… I also don’t experience any windows or waves in my emotional range.

Other symptoms I deal with;

Severe dry eyes

Dry skin

Reduced sweat and mucus

Head pressure

Injured brain feeling

Numb skin

Low libido

Reduced hunger cues

No drive / dopamine feelings

Brain fog

Parts of brain feel missing

Parts of brain feel like air

Can’t feel sleepy/tired in head

Hi everyone, I’ve been in protracted withdrawals for over two years now and I’m currently going through a digestive wave. Normally I can manage the usual daily digestive discomfort (bloating/gas/wind/constipation) but in the waves, it’s much worse. Are there any others who deal with this too? just feeling alone atm and it would nice to hear that I’m not. I hope everyone is doing well.

Hey all,

I know this page is for protracted withdraw and I'm not there yet and have a long way to go. I'm just trying to make it through the initial withdraw phase. I am withdrawing from lexapro my last dose was 2.5 last Thursday so it's been almost a week. I am having terrible intrusive thoughts very disturbing and alot of internal agitation, also alot of emotional instability, I am crossing between hyper aware and brain fog. Also I have had insomnia and low energy.

I guess my question is how long till the worst of it is over mainly concerned about the intrusive thoughts and depression. I can deal with insomnia just the thoughts all day have been bugging me it's like I'm trying to avoid people cause I feel unstable.

Long story short I accidentally took two large doses of Zoloft a month and half ago got a ton of symptoms and quit immediately. 5 days later I developed suicidal harm thoughts. I went to the psychiatrist who said the doses I took were large and shocked my system she recommended getting on lexapro 5 mg for a few weeks to stabilize my system then come off.

I did that and initially got worse tons of insomnia and a full blown impotence and sexual issues. That went in for four weeks I told her I wanted to come off so she recommended going to 2.5 for a couple weeks and then quitting.

I did the 2.5 for almost 3 weeks and was pretty stable at even the lower dose. But when I stopped completely last Friday the last four days have been miserable insomnia, intrusive thoughts the same kind when I quit the Zoloft are back, emotional instability it's like I'm thinking all kind of things that is totally not like me and it's constant.

I'm just wondering at what point does it peak I'm trying to ride it out if I can just get to the part that is more manageable.

I absolutely hate these SSRIs the gave me full blow emotional numbness, numb genitals, and full blown impotence so I am trying to fight to not reinstate the drug but the the thoughts are so terrible and the internal agitation.

It feels almost like someone fucked with my hormones bad so emotionally unstable.

Anyways just curious some peoples experiences and maybe some hope because this is so miserable. I know I'm not myself right now and I regret every day I took those two Zoloft pills a month and a half ago I was having a panic attack and didn't realize you have to go up slowly every time and the drugs never affected me when I was young I took them for like 15 years.

It was so stupid but I just assumed my anxiety was flaring up and needed to restart my medication after having been off many years and I had a completely different reaction I literally was suicidal within days. I have never been suicidal before meds the only reason I was on them in the past was anxiety. This time I developed this harm OCD thing. I know it's not me but doesn't make it any less scary.

Sorry everytime I go to the psychiatrist they just tell me the only option is to get back on SSRIs. I just don't understand why there is nothing to make someone more stable when coming off a ssri

LET'S SPEAK UP!

I'm tapering while dealing with (milder) protracted withdrawal from an earlier fast taper. I also had protracted withdrawal for a year and a half in 2005-2006, which eventually went away when I reinstated. I am wondering about delayed withdrawal effects. I experienced this in 2005, and I know many other people have experienced this, both people I know in real life and people I see in the forums. People quit the drug and have a few months where they feel fine, maybe after a few acute withdrawal symptoms that go away. Then, three or four months out, they are suddenly slammed with protracted withdrawal. I'm not talking about relapse--these are physical symptoms, although psychological symptoms happen too. Does anyone know why this happens? What is the biological mechanism at work? If it's about the serotonin receptors needing to upregulate, why would you feel fine for MONTHS and only then develop problems? I am not talking about prozac with the long half-life. I'm sorry if this has been addressed somewhere already and I missed it. I'm curious about the mechanism, and obviously scared that it will happen to me again.

Hi there. M25 here. I had quit Lorazepam 1 mg, Escitalopram 10 mg, Fluvoxamine 50 mg and Zolpidem 10 mg Cold Turkey after taking all of them regularly for only 21 days. I had self harm intrusive thoughts going on a continuous loop(Probably a form of OCD) and general anxiety beginning 1 month prior to my medications. These significantly impacted my daily life and because i became very worried due to the self harm thoughts my sleep got disrupted as well. I went a week with only 4 hours of sleep in total in Late December because of all that. I finally went to the psychiatrist and he got me admitted at a psych ward for observation and started me on the said meds . I will tell the exact dates when i started on them (when i got admitted) and when i quit- 5 Jan 2026 and 25 Jan 2026 respectively.

I thought the withdrawal wouldn't be much harder and i could cope with whatever came in my way.

My anxiety and the negative thoughts didnt improve much in the meantime, but my sleep was pretty much normal. I felt what they call akathisia or internal restlessness for around2 weeks in late Feb and Early March which then ceased and i could still feel pretty normal.

Now 2 months after stopping the meds( exact date is 24 March 2026), i began getting sleep disturbances again. I would go on to have completely sleepless nights(days as well) for the following 10 days before i got little sleep ranging from around half and hour to 2 hr for the next 4 or 5 days that followed after the sleepless nights.

After that, again from 15th April till now, I have had many sleepless nights and barring them, on most nights i have got maximum of only 1 or 2 hour of sleep each night that too very shallow. I thought the sleep disturbances were only temporary and would not last this long. I never thought that i would not get even 5 hour of sleep for a single night after being sleep deprived that badly.

Initially i was hesitant to go back on the medicnes because i was aware that this might be due to withdrawal and going back would probably mean losing all the improvement i had accumulated in the 3 months. But after 1 month of sleep disturbance of this extreme level combined with increasingly intense self harm thoughts and mental changes, i finally decided to go back to a psychiatrist. In the meanwhile, it had been around 36 days(5 weeks) and i had got less than 12 hours of sleep for each week. (

Fast forward, I visited another psychiatrist on 30th april 2026 and described everything i was going through including the decision to quit without consulting the previous psychiatrist. He prescribed Clonazepam 0.5 mg and Escitalopram 10 mg and said to re-visit him after 7 days.

I took both the meds as prescribed. I got 6 hours of sleep for the first two nights when i started them back, but the following nights, the story remained the same-i didn't get any sleep at all or got around 1 hr of shallow sleep at most.

After 7 days(last Thursday) when i again visited him, i told him that clonazepam wasn't working too well either, and it was then that he told me to stop clonazepam and start zolpidem instead. I was already skeptical about quitting clonazepam abruptly this time, so i asked him if it was okay to stop it cold turkey again after 7 days(I took it only for so long) and he said that i was completely okay. I was very confused in my mind as to what should i do now as i couldn't take both of them together-both of them being CNS depressants and about cold turkeying another benzo again. I finally decided to go with the doctor and began taking zolpidem 12.5 mg the same night. Escitalopram was told to be continued further(i take one in the morning). My blood pressure has also risen from all this. I got a 150/90 reading both the times i went to the psychiatrist.

Even after being on zolpidem, my sleep hasn't improved a bit. For these 5 days since i started on zolpidem i didn't get more than 1 or 1.5 hours of sleep every night. Tonight was almost a sleepless night as well. One thing i forgot to add is that whenever i fall asleep, its like my brain immediately realizes its falling asleep and gets back to being awake like it doesn't want to sleep anymore or that sleep is something it doesn't remember anymore or has deleted from its system(it is not a very clear example but it is what i feel).

Not to mention, my entire life has come to a pause and i am basically bed ridden at this point. In the beginning, i tried many things to tire myself out or regulate my circadian rhythm thinking my sleep problems may be due to it, but nothing helped. I rememeber when the sleep troubles began i was jogging around 4 km and walking the same distance each day besides the usual walking you do in your day to day life. I even tried putting the phone away three hours before sleep, following routine sleep hours, reading myself to sleep but none worked. So i abamdoned them all after around 10 to 12 days of trying all those techniques to get my body to sleep.

I get constant racing thoughts at night, i cannot figure out anything or make simple plans, i have difficulty doing simple analysis or doing critical thinking. I am ruminating 24x7 despite not wanting to and on top of all that, the suicidal thoughts are always there with me on a continous loop.

So, to conclude it, i haven't slept more than 1 hour each night on an average with around 20 sleepless nights in 52 days and feeling like that i am not a human anymore. I don't have an idea what is going to happen in the future to me.

Hi Guys i was performing well till April 6th 2026 on fluvoxamine 75 mg controlled release brand name is voxapeace which i was cutting and shaving weighing using scale from August 2025 of the 100 mg CR and it went well till April 6 th 2026 and after that I requested my doctor to change that to immediate release version of fluvoxamine brand name fluvoxin sun Pharma brand and just took three days by cutting and shaving and weighing 75 mg and was crashed with full blown si** thoughts panic attacks and severe nausea for three days and then again renistated back on April 11th 2026 and it nausea settled suic**al lingering everyday panic attacks settled and then sleep was also better and again April 26 th 2026 hit with severe si thoughts again don't know why and then changed the formation again voxapeace 50 mg controlled release and voxidep 25 mg different brand immediate release for 5 days and was totally sleep deprived too much of si thoughts and gastric and gi issues and reduced further down to 50 mg voxapeace brand from May 4 th till May 10th withdrawal symptoms was so heavy i got much intrusive thoughts and so again i reinstated back 75 mg on May 11th controlled release voxapeace brand still much sleep.deprieved just 5 hours of sleep everyday tell me when I will stabilize please give some advise here si thoughts also plaguing me everyday .....I am on pregabalin 25mg and amisulpride 25mg and Melatonin 3mg and magnesium glycinate supplements

Hi all,

I read a lot about anxiety, fear, crying spells, ruminating, etc. My experiences in this withdrawal is completely the opposite. Almost complete emotional anesthesia (don’t even feel bad emotions), anhedonia and a blank mind. Its like it’s physically impossible for me to feel emotions or ruminate. Chemically it feels like: Ctrl alt delete.

I also experience really painful head pressure and excruciating head sensations 24/7.

Do others have this as well and have you seen improvements? Feeling nothing is the worse thing that ever happened to me (even tho I can’t even process the severity of it without emotions). It’s inhumane.

hi all, if this isn’t the place for this post please delete. I just wanted to see if I can get your opinions on what has been going on with me and many others in a fb group. I was taking a glp1 and stopped after a few months. i was on the lowest dose but I kept having constipation so I figured Id take a break and since I was on the lowest dose. I stopped cold turkey for a few weeks and suddenly felt wrong. Like every part of me was different. I felt like I didn’t have control of my arms and legs, I felt my skin crawling, I couldn’t stop moving , my mouth was twitching, I was having trouble speaking, my mouth couldn’t keep up with my thoughts, I felt like I couldn’t think straight and was so confused all the time, I had SI, harm ocd, ocd and weird mental changes Ive never experienced. I’m a 30 yr old female. I took one dose of sertaline one time in my life and didn’t like it so never took it again. I’ve always had mild anxiety but whatever happened after using the glp1 was a million times worse. I’ve been to the ER 10 times in the last year. They don’t ever find anything and diagnose panic attacks. I see a bunch of different specialists. They are all calling it anxiety but like i said I’ve always had some anxiety but this is so different. I can’t sleep at night. I struggle every day I feel like I’m just surgiving minute to minute. My memories are gone. CognitiveLoy I’m a completely different person. I had to drop out of my masters program, I can’t work, I can’t drive. I’m constantly dizzy, always on edge and overall just a different person than I was. I’m 13 months off of the glp1 and recently Ive been experiencing moments where I feel myself coming back But theyve only been for a half of a day twice in the last 13 months. I don’t know if these are the windows I see others talking about. I also might have the waves as I spent nov-feb in absolute hell and thought I was going to lose my mind and end up in a psych hospital. I can’t manege any stress and was bedridden for a few months during this too. My doctors have not helped at all because they all say that glp1s leave your system within 5 and 1/2 weeks and aren’t known to cause any of the issues I have. But I know i Had nothing like this until the glp1 use. I have pcos and needed to lose 100 lbs that’s why I was on it in the first place. Can anybody tell me if maybe I’m on to something so I can discuss with my doctors and maybe get at least some support from them. Thank you for reading.

I was on Lexapro for four months, tapered over 1.5 months and just stopped taking 5 the lowest dose 3 days ago. Ive been experiencing random hits of pins and needles or tingling sensations that last about a second in my hands and or arms and or chest. It seems to happen randomly with movement, the only time I don't feel it is when I am laying down. I am really freaked out and it is quite bothersome. I am wondering if this could be due to stopping Lexapro? My dr said hes never seen this before since I tapered. I plan to go get scans to rule out nerve problems but it is very distressing. Any insight would be appreciated. The sensations go as soon as they come pretty much but occur a few times a minute it seems.