Posted by blueberry on May 12, 2006, at 13:45:12
In reply to Re: Prozac not my friend anymore. » blueberry, posted by Paul on Long Island on May 12, 2006, at 7:05:05
Hi Paul on Long Island,
To answer your questions...
I was on 20mg prozac along with 5mg zyprexa up until Sept.
This time around I am on 2.5mg zyprexa (about a week now) after being off meds for 10 weeks.
In Spring of 2005 I was not depressed but rather flat and socially withdrawn. My GP said add st johns wort to the prozac and zyprexa, but reduce prozac to 10mg. I did. It worked fantastic. Best I ever felt. After a couple months it pooped.
Upon weaning off sjw, all hell broke loose. Massive anxiety, emergency room panic attacks, severe body tremors and shaking, very scary. I could no longer handle coffee, or prozac, or marijuana, because they all became extremely overly stimulating. So all of a sudden I was withdrawing from sjw, prozac, and coffee all at the same time cold turkey.
Later I found out more about sjw. It binds strongly to benzo receptors and is also a gaba reuptake inhibitor. Of the 30 or so symtpoms of benzo withdrawals, I had every one of them.
I also found out sjw increases zyprexa blood levels by 300%. I should have known. My appetite had increased a lot, I had a strange tongue twisting thing happening, weird head twitches, just overall heavy antipsychoticness. My zyprexa dose was actually around 15mg - 20mg even though I was only taking 5mg. So in addition to withdrawing from eveything else, I was also cold turkey withdrawing from an antipsychotic.
Put it all together and no wonder I was going 1000mph, tremors, and everything.
Got on 7.5mg lexapro and 500mg depakote and 2.5mg zyprexa. Things calmed down, but I was considerably depressed. Doc weaned me off all of them hoping to go natural...5htp, tyrosine, all that jazz...which was a flop. Then 10 weeks with nothing.
And here I am, now on 2.5mg zyprexa to end the aweful physical symtpoms...total anorexia...loud tinnitus, intense acoustic startle response, terror filled sleep. Prozac just doesn't feel at all like it used to.
poster:blueberry
thread:642910
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060510/msgs/643049.html