This story is work in progress
I was able to quit Escitalopram three times without problem in the past.
I decided to take Escitalopram on January 7 2024 for mild anxiety, and then after one small dose, decided not to take it anymore. I decided not to take it anymore, mainly because I felt different while taking it. I felt mild emotional blunting and mild cognitive problems. Days later, after that single small dose, I felt different; I started having anhedonia and reduced sexual attraction. I was very surprised because I just took about one quarter of a 10 mg tablet.
I went to a psychiatrist and he told me it was possible Escitalopram caused me those symptoms, but he wasn’t very convinced. He told me to wait some weeks. Also, I realized he knew very little about the drug and its adverse effects. I had to explain to him several things.
I waited several weeks, and my symptoms did not change. I thought: maybe because I only took one dose, this happened to me. Maybe I should had taken the drug for several days.
I made a lot of research online. I read a lot in survivingantidepressants.org. I realized that the effects of these types of drugs are barely understood. I was tired of my symptoms, and I knew that going again to the psychiatrist would be a waste of time and money. I became desperate.
So, about one month after I took the first dose on January 7, I decided to take the risk and experiment by taking the SSRI again. Worse thing is, I was mild, compared to now (6 december 2024). If I had stayed in that state, I could had just continue living without paying too much attention to the topic.
So, on 4 february 2024, I started taking Escitalopram again. My plan was to take it for some days to see what happens. The doses I took and the symptoms I had can be seen in graph #1.
I started with about 1 mg of Escitalopram. I didn’t weigh it, I visually estimate it. The next day I took about one quarter of a 10 mg tablet. I remember feeling the Escitalopram effect felt less than what it felt before. It felt like watered down; like if I was less sensitive to the drug. For this reason, the next day I decided to take 5 mg, which is almost double the dose of what I took the day before (or more exactly about 14 hours before, see graph #1).
My symptoms went away while the drug effect was on; however, I did not like the effect of Escitalopram, which I already described. So I started tapering off. Days after I took the last dose, I returned to the previous state. I still had anhedonia and reduced sexual attraction. However, I felt slightly, very slightly different. I felt like if I could feel anxiety a bit more. I describe the symptoms and doses in the graph below.
About one month later I decided to experiment again, without any planning. I took 2 doses, in desperation (see graph #1). As I expected it, my symptoms went away while the drug effect was on. This is something very interesting. After the drug effect went away, my symptoms returned; however, this time, new symptoms appeared. I started with cognitive symptoms and others.
Three weeks later, I planned to do a new experiment. I think it’s important to mention that this time, I was prescribed Escitalopram. Surprisingly, the psychiatrist didn’t care about my symptoms being caused by Escitalopram, so he didn’t care in prescribing me an SSRI. He prescribe 2.5 mg for 2 weeks I think, and then to increase to 5mg. My plan was to start taking 2.5 mg and taper off in the following days. I was expecting to at least improve a bit.
So I started with 2.5 mg on Friday 22nd of march 2024. As I expected, my symptoms went away while the drug effect was on. I started tapering the following day.
During the afternoon of 25th of march 2024, I was feeling everything was going okay. My symptoms were not “on”, and the drug effect was “on” as it should. That same day, at night, I started having pain in the Urethra. I knew it was related to Escitalopram, because in the past I had sensations in the urethra while I was taking the med. I took the next dose at around 1:30 AM, 26th of march, and went to sleep.
After waking up, I still felt the urethra pain. I panicked because I knew it was related to Escitalopram. I thought maybe I was tapering too fast, so I decided to take a bit more of the med that day at about 11:26 AM, 26TH of march 2024.
Unfortunately, when I took the last dose of about 1 mg, minutes later, I started feeling very different. I started thinking I had serotonin syndrome or something like that. Since that day, 26th of March 2024, to this day (December 9 2024), I’ve been feeling the same. During the next days, I would start discovering new symptoms like genital numbness, full body numbness, tingling in extremities, and others…
