Posted by sarah1980 on September 21, 2003, at 4:31:44
In reply to withdrawal symptoms coming off zoloft, posted by Shelly on May 4, 1999, at 17:37:51
Size of dosage and duration of treatment may well have an effect on how the withdrawal places itself out, if ther is withdrawal in the first place. When I go off of zoloft it takes a month to be fully free of problems. I get these strange dizzy flashes and muscle aches. When I sleep I can have dreams in which I wake up into another dream and then wake up thinking I am really awake and so on and so on. At a certain point it just becomes annoying and i just start telling myself that I am dreaming and have to work on waking.
One really scary thing that happened one or two times is that I woke up but couldn't move... my body was still asleep. It was really horrifying. I also hallucinated that I could hear heavy breathing and someone holding down my arms. I finally began to really think that I had been drugged and someone was trying to molest/rape/atttack me (something which did actually happen once, making it all the more freaky). With all my mental energy I worked to try to scream but couldn't. Then I focused on just being able to open my eyes and turn my head to get a glimpse of the person since it seemed I couldn't fight him off. After minutes I was finally able to and when I did I turned to look at the wall and saw a spider which slowly walked up the wall and then disappeared. Weird.
But I have also had times where it was relatively mild. I think effects are fairly variable. How fast you stop probably has some effect, although zoloft has a very long half-life (this is the reason it is still in your system until a month later).
But, still, I am not sure that I would be alive today were it not for zoloft. Most peole that don't use SSRIs think that the side effects or withdrawal are serious enough to not try the medicines. No withdrawal symptom I have ever had from zoloft makes me wish I had never taken it or would stop me from taking it now.
poster:sarah1980
thread:5582
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030917/msgs/262117.html