I had a similar experience when I stopped taking my Escitalopram after a couple years. The word I found when I looked it up was "brain zaps." I would be sitting normally, playing Warcraft, and then turn my head to grab a drink and I would feel a sort of shock radiating from my brain through my body, very disorienting.
They eventually subsided, but when I reported them to my Doc who I was still occasionally seeing at the time, she denied that was a side-effect from stopping taking them. I found hundreds of people mentioning this feeling when poking around various forums, so guess who I believed? This experience cemented my contempt for shrinks and meds basically permanently. I'll take shrooms or LSD first, and I've never even touched those to begin with.
I find myself repeatedly and increasingly astounded with how clueless most doctors honestly are about their given fields and the treatments they prescribe.
I mean I guess I wouldn't be surprised if an MD would be that clueless, but someone specifically specializing in the psychiatric or psychological field really shouldn't be so clueless. It's not even a remotely newly understood phenomena either.
I've been, hesitantly, investigating the new findings from psychedelic-based treatments. Something I realized, and quickly confirmed, was that a lot of the interest and money is almost certainly coming from pharmaceutical companies who are eager to develop and patent new treatments based off of this stuff, without directly putting themselves at risk during the research phase.
Now, that doesn't negate the possible efficacy currently being tested and evaluated, but it does mean that patients ought to keep both eyes open when they look into what kind of doctor and/or facility they're hooking up with, and what kind of treatment regiment is being offered. Because I think that some of these companies are testing synthetically designed variants that drug companies are trying to build new patented drugs on. And my level of trust in their typical approach to developing reliable treatments is not especially high. And they do love burying side effects and risks under the rug.
I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who has suffered from this particular withdrawal symptom. That's exactly how it feels, a weird rushing sensation that radiates from my head throughout my body. How long were you off the pills before that subsided? It's hard to pick a time to quit because my work requires a significant amount of concentration and I can't be losing focus like that.
It is shocking how little doctors know about the medicines they're prescribing people. I think it's basically a flow chart for a lot of them; 'If A then B'. You would hope that the brightest among us might have a LITTLE intellectual curiosity, but I think the past few years have proved that is wishful thinking.
It's been at least 5 years since then, so I don't remember very well, but it was less than 1 month before I never had another one again (and I was taking roughly 10-20mg for 2 years). I weened myself down to only 5mg a day, then every other day, then completely off them as my bottle ran out, and they just happened less and less frequently, and less severely as time went on.
Who the FUCK knows what it was doing to my head all that time I was on them, or why that was a withdrawal symptom, but it was so much more bad than good that I'll never be convinced to try it again.
I had a similar experience when I stopped taking my Escitalopram after a couple years. The word I found when I looked it up was "brain zaps." I would be sitting normally, playing Warcraft, and then turn my head to grab a drink and I would feel a sort of shock radiating from my brain through my body, very disorienting.
They eventually subsided, but when I reported them to my Doc who I was still occasionally seeing at the time, she denied that was a side-effect from stopping taking them. I found hundreds of people mentioning this feeling when poking around various forums, so guess who I believed? This experience cemented my contempt for shrinks and meds basically permanently. I'll take shrooms or LSD first, and I've never even touched those to begin with.
I find myself repeatedly and increasingly astounded with how clueless most doctors honestly are about their given fields and the treatments they prescribe.
I mean I guess I wouldn't be surprised if an MD would be that clueless, but someone specifically specializing in the psychiatric or psychological field really shouldn't be so clueless. It's not even a remotely newly understood phenomena either.
I've been, hesitantly, investigating the new findings from psychedelic-based treatments. Something I realized, and quickly confirmed, was that a lot of the interest and money is almost certainly coming from pharmaceutical companies who are eager to develop and patent new treatments based off of this stuff, without directly putting themselves at risk during the research phase.
Now, that doesn't negate the possible efficacy currently being tested and evaluated, but it does mean that patients ought to keep both eyes open when they look into what kind of doctor and/or facility they're hooking up with, and what kind of treatment regiment is being offered. Because I think that some of these companies are testing synthetically designed variants that drug companies are trying to build new patented drugs on. And my level of trust in their typical approach to developing reliable treatments is not especially high. And they do love burying side effects and risks under the rug.
I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who has suffered from this particular withdrawal symptom. That's exactly how it feels, a weird rushing sensation that radiates from my head throughout my body. How long were you off the pills before that subsided? It's hard to pick a time to quit because my work requires a significant amount of concentration and I can't be losing focus like that.
It is shocking how little doctors know about the medicines they're prescribing people. I think it's basically a flow chart for a lot of them; 'If A then B'. You would hope that the brightest among us might have a LITTLE intellectual curiosity, but I think the past few years have proved that is wishful thinking.
It's been at least 5 years since then, so I don't remember very well, but it was less than 1 month before I never had another one again (and I was taking roughly 10-20mg for 2 years). I weened myself down to only 5mg a day, then every other day, then completely off them as my bottle ran out, and they just happened less and less frequently, and less severely as time went on.
Who the FUCK knows what it was doing to my head all that time I was on them, or why that was a withdrawal symptom, but it was so much more bad than good that I'll never be convinced to try it again.