I recently tapered off a dosulepin, a tricyclic antidepressant.
Holy christ, I was not prepared for the 2 weeks of absolute hell that ensued - intense vomiting, headache, small visual and aural hallucinations and malaise like I've never felt before. I barely got out of bed for the first week, and ate nothing. Several times I was on the edge of going to hospital because I felt like I was dying. Honestly, possibly the worst 2 weeks of my life.
I later learned that it seems it's actually well known amongst patients that coming off of antidepressants can cause withdrawals - tricyclics, SSRIs, SNRIs, NRIs, anti-convulsants, all of them.
The thing is, out of ignorance a lot of doctors simply deny it's possible. This kind of thing infuriates me - when doing pharmaceutical trials, the manufacturers must have come across instances of patients going through withdrawals upon cessation, but somehow that information never makes it to the papers, the leaflets or the doctors.
Holy christ, I was not prepared for the 2 weeks of absolute hell that ensued - intense vomiting, headache, small visual and aural hallucinations and malaise like I've never felt before. I barely got out of bed for the first week, and ate nothing. Several times I was on the edge of going to hospital because I felt like I was dying. Honestly, possibly the worst 2 weeks of my life.
I later learned that it seems it's actually well known amongst patients that coming off of antidepressants can cause withdrawals - tricyclics, SSRIs, SNRIs, NRIs, anti-convulsants, all of them.
The thing is, out of ignorance a lot of doctors simply deny it's possible. This kind of thing infuriates me - when doing pharmaceutical trials, the manufacturers must have come across instances of patients going through withdrawals upon cessation, but somehow that information never makes it to the papers, the leaflets or the doctors.