Why I Came Off Antidepressants And The Side Effects I Had

When I first went to my doctor at the tender age of seventeen, I was in good spirits because I was finally dealing with how I felt at the time. I’d been anxious since I was little and decided enough was enough. My mother joined me as we entered the doctors office and he began to ask me how he could help me.

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This post is about why I came off antidepressants and the side effects that followed. I wanted to write this post because it has been a long time since I quit my antidepressants and I feel as if I’m doing okay considering they were my crutch for many years.

Coming off your medications is something you should do only once you have discussed it with your doctor because everyone is different. Coming off anti-depressants cold turkey can have its risks so be careful in how you approach it. This is simply my experience when coming off anti-depressants and what you can potentially expeirence if you come off anti-depressants too. There is no one-size-fits-all here.

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Sitting in a chair next to my mother, I began to explain how anxious I had been in recent years and how I wanted a way to calm my nervous mind. Even at that age, I knew I shouldn’t have been that anxious, simply because none of my friends seemed to feel how I felt. I wanted a fix or at least get some reassurance.

It wasn’t long into our conversation that the doctor spun his chair round to his computer and began to explain that he was prescribing me citalopram. It would be the same drug that some of my family members were already on. I knew nothing about it but knowing those in my family were using it made me feel comfortable.

Although I didn’t know how a silly little pill was going to change my life, I decided to at least give it a try. We went straight to the pharmacy and bought my anti-depressants there and then. I remember the doctor saying that they would take at least two weeks to start working so I popped my first one and continued to take one in the morning, every day for the next two weeks.

Like many people, I was hoping that finally taking a drug would calm my mind and fix the “chemical imbalance in my brain”, as the doctor put it. I was starting to feel in good, not because the drug was working but because I was taking back control over my emotions at last.

Soon enough, two weeks had past and I was starting to feel what I thought were the effects of the anti-depressant. It felt as if what the doctor had described was happening in my brain had started to settle;

“you have less serotonin in your brain than most people. Some people just don’t produce that much of this ‘feel good’ chemical and this is why you feel anxious and down.”

My Doctor

It seemed as if the chemicals in my brain had finally started to balance out and after two weeks I began to feel less anxious and less afraid. I had a sense of newfound confidence and found it easier to go to school or just out of the house.

It was like a miracle had occurred. One minute I was anxious and fed up, the next, I didn’t seem to have a care in the world. The negative emotions were finally being blocked out of my brain.

My antidepressants worked…a little too well…

I spent about six weeks on my medication before I started to question whether they were really a good idea or not. During those first few weeks I felt much better and even more confident. However, it was around the six week mark that I realised something, something very strange.

I noticed that although I didn’t feel very anxious anymore, the anti-depressants I was taking were also stunting all my other emotions. In hindsight, it’s ridiculous to think that a drug would only target one human emotion, it’s very obvious if you think about it – the mind is interconnected, meaning that you can’t isolate one emotion from another. All functions are influenced by each other.

What my medication was doing was stunting all of my emotions, not just the anxiety.

I noticed that I couldn’t get very anxious but I also couldn’t get very interested or excited about anything. I didn’t have much interest in people and even felt as if I couldn’t feel love at one point. Truth be told, I was disturbed by this but I continued to take my antidepressants because the narrative was quite simple; “you are better taking them then feeling the way you did.”

The thought of stopping was scary because for one I didn’t want to go back to how I had felt before and secondly I didn’t want to undo what had seemed like some kind of progress.

For the next two years I popped my medication and found myself living in a blurry state of animation. Because I had a loss of emotion I felt more robot than human, living my day to day just for the sake of it.

I didn’t make things any easier for myself over those two years, I missed taking my antidepressants and had a bunch of side-effects by doing so. Most notably was the fact that I was quick to get snappy and moody if I’d skipped a day. This took a toll on my family relationships and I just felt as if I became a slave to taking my medication. If I didn’t take them I’d suffer the side-effects for at least two days.

Coming off my medication

Another side effect of coming off antidepressants was aggression, something that I am not proud of. Whenever I’d miss a day or two of taking my medication I would feel angry and irritated easily. The slightest thing would piss me off and again, it would take a big toll on my relationships. I felt trapped, as if I’d have to take the pills forever.

I had become dependant on them, not so much to feel less anxious but because I didn’t want to feel the withdrawal symptoms that interrupted my life. The thing is, I knew that the medication was working – I wasn’t very anxious anymore, but I also had a sense that I had lost myself, I was no longer the fun kind of guy that I felt I was when I was younger. I felt stunted, like I’d altered my brain chemistry for the worse.

Is it really worth feeling less anxious when you realise that you have completely lost who you thought you were?

The answer seemed simple – no. So how do you come off antidepressants? I was finally ready to take the risk after two years. I didn’t want to have to take a pill for the rest of my life, every single day! Surely that’s not a very effective fix! After all, it was apparent that the doctors were using this method as a blanket approach to everyone that came to them complaining about anxiety.

I do not blame them however, this is not their area of expertise. These days doctors will refer you to therapists or prescribe you antidepressants. If I was offered therapy, I’d like to think that I would have taken it.

Can you imagine taking antidepressants every day for the rest of your life? To me, it seemed kind of crazy, continually altering your natural state. This is of course all personal opinion and there are pros to taking antidepressants, especially if you’re really struggling, they can be a temporary crutch and do wonders.

After being faced with a reality of spending thousands of medications over the next who-knows-how-many-years I decided to kick my citalopram to the curb. I thought that to face the way I had been feeling, I would have to do it myself, not with the help of medication because how else would I learn?

The antidepressants were a temporary fix that were just masking my anxiety and making it worse when I missed a day.

Brain zaps coming off antidepressants

This is a really interesting one. I never knew that other people experienced this as well until I looked around online.

I decided to ditch my citalopram and awaited the awful side effects. Sure enough, after the first day I started to experience them, grumpiness, irritability and brain zaps. What are brain zaps you ask? It’s kid of hard to explain if you haven’t had them.

Brain zaps are the sensation of a quick light-headed build up that peak quickly, as if you’ve been zapped by a tiny taser in your brain. I always imagined them as the neurons in my brain disconnecting as they withdrew from the added serotonin from the medication I was taking.

These aren’t painful but more annoying and can last a long time. I used to have brain zaps here and there when I missed a day of taking my pills but they really kicked in when I was coming off my antidepressants. My brain zaps would occur several times a day for at least two weeks after I stopped taking my meds.

Luckily they stopped because they were also making me quite lightheaded at the same time which made it really difficult to concentrate.

Dizziness coming off antidepressants

Throughout the day I’d become very dizzy and find myself needing to sit down. coming off my meds was the only time in my life where I didn’t feel myself more than when I was on them. I began to feel as if I was living a life that wasn’t mine, much like I did before I went onto antidepressants, completely removed from reality.

Fortunately, this didn’t last more than a couple of weeks much like the brain zaps. The dizziness was probably the most uncomfortable side effect of coming off antidepressants quickly. Your mind and body has to recalibrate after being reliant on a drug that you put in your body everyday. It’s like anyhting that you can become addicted to.

At first you take a drug because you like it and eventually you just take it to stave off the withdrawal symptoms. It’s important to remember that antidepressants are man made drugs and are very potent. The body becomes reliant on them like any potent substance.

Coming off antidepressants cold turkey

After three weeks I was starting to feel much better and was only having a few brain zaps here and there. I was no longer shielded from the anxiety I felt the two years previous. The withdrawal symptoms of coming off my antidepressants continued to some degree here and there for months and I wondered if they would ever stop.

After a good year I was feeling like I was finally free of my antidepressants and everything that came with them. I came off my antidepressants cold turkey and I don’t recommend it to anyone. I was stubborn and wanted to deal my my anxiety myself. I wanted to believe that I could do it myself and not be chained to an aid forever.

I wanted to learn and grow as a person so that I could change my life and how I was from the inside. That seemed like an important lesson. I felt as if I eventually did this but of course, it came with the drawbacks of having persistent side effects that were not at all enjoyable.

It is possible to come off antidepressants cold turkey and grind through it but if I was to do it again, I’d do it differently. For example, I would cut back to one pill every other day, then once a week and then completely quit. Again, you should talk to your doctor about coming off your antidepressants because everyone will react differently.

You can find more withdrawal symptoms from coming off antidepressants too quickly here.

Come off antidepressants with support

As well as coming off your medication slowly, I’d also recommend having support in place when you do this. This is something that I had and it really helped. You don’t know how you’re going to react when you lower your dose so it’s vital that you have understanding people around you.

It’s also vital that you tell your friends and family that you’ve decided to come off your antidepressants in the first place so they can help you and it’s not a shock if you start to go backwards.

I found the first couple of weeks really difficult but by having people that understood around me, it made things a lot easier.

How will you react?

It’s difficult to know how you will react to coming off antidepressants because everyone is different. However, after doing some research over the years many of the withdrawal effects I described that happened to me seem to happen to many people. You may find yourself becoming very anxious again or you might have had the time since you started taking your medication to gather some internal confidence in social situations etc.

After my two weeks of withdrawals, I was anxious again but I made myself try and deal with it myself. Dealing with anxiety is a long process and I still get very anxious sometimes. The difference now is I’m more educated in the subject so I have my own ways of calming my mind.

Instead of slapping a pill over the problem I have created ways of managing my anxiety when it pops up. Sometimes it’s too much and I get in a flurry but most of the time I can use my own methods to alleviate it.

Now, I can’t imagine going back onto antidepressants. For me, I never enjoyed the dull brain state I was in. At the beginning, they definitely helped me and now I see them as a learning experience. There are so many people that take antidepressants and some find them to be really useful.

Whether they just have a strong placebo effect is up for debate. Sometimes, that can be enough to help some people. Always make your own decision.

This was my story of coming off my antidepressants. Remember, everyone is different and it might be better for you to stay on yours. I know many people on antidepressants and they have helped them immensely. Talk to your doctor own doctor before you decide to make the switch.