Posted by Prefect on January 12, 2013, at 19:28:00
In reply to Re: Pooped out SSRI - No discontinuation problems?, posted by linkadge on January 12, 2013, at 17:17:44
I was in a 7 year remission from agoraphobia on 50 mg Luvox/day (no benzos, nothing else). I began to doubt the Luvox could possibly be the reason for such a long remission at such a subtheraputic dose.
I took 6 months to taper down to 37.5 mg/day and to my shock ended up having a relapse! The relapse has lasted for 6 months, during which I've slowly dosed back up. Every higher dose works for a couple of days and then I get even more anxious than before. Currently on 100 mg/day (for 4 weeks) and it had some theraputic effect for a week or two, but again, currently too anxious to consider the drug as "working".
Poop out? Not sure. This whole thing has baffled me to no end. My anxiety is much worse during this relapse than the original onset 8 years ago.
I've given some hard thought to going off meds. I've been reading research indicating SSRIs delay fear extinction during exposure by downregulating cortisol. Cortisol release is an important part of the stress response that results in eventual desensitization. In other words, ironically I'm not getting scared enough during exposure to get desensitized enough to cure my agoraphobia! I should mention my incidents of avoidance during this 6 months relapse has been nil! I even drove 10 hours away for the holidays. But i'm still anxious going out. My agoraphobia is resistant to exposure?!! I don't understand. The medication must be interfering with the theraputic effects of exposure...Other than that I'm out of ideas!
So I'm begining to be faced with the choice of sticking it out on this dosage or tapering down to medication free expose and see what happens.
Unless someone else has any ideas? Quite a humdinger.
poster:Prefect
thread:1035302
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20130112/msgs/1035327.html