Posted by Gary Engel on October 17, 2007, at 17:09:35 [reposted on October 17, 2007, at 20:19:29 | original URL]
I've been on Serzone 400mg for years, probably 4 years. My brother recently passed away and my anxiety shot up through the roof. At first they tried to add a few SSRI's, all of which made me sick with mostly terrible flu like symptoms that persisted even on tiny doses, so SSRI's are out. Recently, my pdoc decided to take me off the Serzon, he set up a schedule to drop 50mg / week. Well it was all great until I went from 150mg down to 100mg (a 33% drop). The more you lower your dose, the more the percentages become a factor, as they will go up if your lowering based on Milligrams rather than percentage, which is what happened to me. I went into the hospital for a simple operation on my arm. Two days later, I started having severe Akasthesia. Look it up, if you don't know what it is. I thought I was losing my mind. I felt like I drank 50 cups of Cappachino and couldn't sit still. Felt like I needed to crawl out of my skin. My mind was racing, and I just coldn't sit still. It was like the inside of my body was shaking like crazy. Also felt like my heart rate was 300, but it was only in the 70's. It put me back in the ER and I was given 2mg of IV Ativan which did nothing. Then they gave me 25mg of IV Benedryl and boom, it was gone. But that was short lived and it came back soon after I was sent home. For two more days, I ate Benedryl every 3 hours to help the symptoms that kept coming back. Because I didn't know what the problem was, I got really scared. Then, I took an extra 100mg of Serzone and within an hour, it was all gone, problem solved. So I'm now going back up on it as my pdoc says since I tolerate it, it will be a nice adjunct to the Seroquel he wants to add. But it is very low dose Seroquel 6.25-12.5mg as needed. I'm sure the anhestesia played a small part by blocking cytokines, but that is something I never want to go through again. I couldn't think straight while this was going on and thought I was losing my mind and ready to be committed. It's seems to be mostly resolved now. I hope the Serzone doesn't give me problems on the way up. Now my pdoc says it was impossible that the serzone caused this, but these guys are so egotistical, they would argue that the sky is blue. You can't tell them or suggest anything. Thats been my experience. fortunately I'm now working with a guy who is renoundly known and knows exactly what he is doing. He confirmed that my other pdoc put the nail in the coufin when he lowered me from 150mg to 100mg. He also said, you should never be weaning off an antidepressant when your about to have surgery.
Gary
poster:Gary Engel
thread:789844
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/wdrawl/20070929/msgs/789844.html