r/ADprotractedwithdrawl

LET'S SPEAK UP!

Hi there. M25 here. I had quit Lorazepam 1 mg, Escitalopram 10 mg, Fluvoxamine 50 mg and Zolpidem 10 mg Cold Turkey after taking all of them regularly for only 21 days. I had self harm intrusive thoughts going on a continuous loop(Probably a form of OCD) and general anxiety beginning 1 month prior to my medications. These significantly impacted my daily life and because i became very worried due to the self harm thoughts my sleep got disrupted as well. I went a week with only 4 hours of sleep in total in Late December because of all that. I finally went to the psychiatrist and he got me admitted at a psych ward for observation and started me on the said meds . I will tell the exact dates when i started on them (when i got admitted) and when i quit- 5 Jan 2026 and 25 Jan 2026 respectively.

I thought the withdrawal wouldn't be much harder and i could cope with whatever came in my way.

My anxiety and the negative thoughts didnt improve much in the meantime, but my sleep was pretty much normal. I felt what they call akathisia or internal restlessness for around2 weeks in late Feb and Early March which then ceased and i could still feel pretty normal.

Now 2 months after stopping the meds( exact date is 24 March 2026), i began getting sleep disturbances again. I would go on to have completely sleepless nights(days as well) for the following 10 days before i got little sleep ranging from around half and hour to 2 hr for the next 4 or 5 days that followed after the sleepless nights.

After that, again from 15th April till now, I have had many sleepless nights and barring them, on most nights i have got maximum of only 1 or 2 hour of sleep each night that too very shallow. I thought the sleep disturbances were only temporary and would not last this long. I never thought that i would not get even 5 hour of sleep for a single night after being sleep deprived that badly.

Initially i was hesitant to go back on the medicnes because i was aware that this might be due to withdrawal and going back would probably mean losing all the improvement i had accumulated in the 3 months. But after 1 month of sleep disturbance of this extreme level combined with increasingly intense self harm thoughts and mental changes, i finally decided to go back to a psychiatrist. In the meanwhile, it had been around 36 days(5 weeks) and i had got less than 12 hours of sleep for each week. (

Fast forward, I visited another psychiatrist on 30th april 2026 and described everything i was going through including the decision to quit without consulting the previous psychiatrist. He prescribed Clonazepam 0.5 mg and Escitalopram 10 mg and said to re-visit him after 7 days.

I took both the meds as prescribed. I got 6 hours of sleep for the first two nights when i started them back, but the following nights, the story remained the same-i didn't get any sleep at all or got around 1 hr of shallow sleep at most.

After 7 days(last Thursday) when i again visited him, i told him that clonazepam wasn't working too well either, and it was then that he told me to stop clonazepam and start zolpidem instead. I was already skeptical about quitting clonazepam abruptly this time, so i asked him if it was okay to stop it cold turkey again after 7 days(I took it only for so long) and he said that i was completely okay. I was very confused in my mind as to what should i do now as i couldn't take both of them together-both of them being CNS depressants and about cold turkeying another benzo again. I finally decided to go with the doctor and began taking zolpidem 12.5 mg the same night. Escitalopram was told to be continued further(i take one in the morning). My blood pressure has also risen from all this. I got a 150/90 reading both the times i went to the psychiatrist.

Even after being on zolpidem, my sleep hasn't improved a bit. For these 5 days since i started on zolpidem i didn't get more than 1 or 1.5 hours of sleep every night. Tonight was almost a sleepless night as well. One thing i forgot to add is that whenever i fall asleep, its like my brain immediately realizes its falling asleep and gets back to being awake like it doesn't want to sleep anymore or that sleep is something it doesn't remember anymore or has deleted from its system(it is not a very clear example but it is what i feel).

Not to mention, my entire life has come to a pause and i am basically bed ridden at this point. In the beginning, i tried many things to tire myself out or regulate my circadian rhythm thinking my sleep problems may be due to it, but nothing helped. I rememeber when the sleep troubles began i was jogging around 4 km and walking the same distance each day besides the usual walking you do in your day to day life. I even tried putting the phone away three hours before sleep, following routine sleep hours, reading myself to sleep but none worked. So i abamdoned them all after around 10 to 12 days of trying all those techniques to get my body to sleep.

I get constant racing thoughts at night, i cannot figure out anything or make simple plans, i have difficulty doing simple analysis or doing critical thinking. I am ruminating 24x7 despite not wanting to and on top of all that, the suicidal thoughts are always there with me on a continous loop.

So, to conclude it, i haven't slept more than 1 hour each night on an average with around 20 sleepless nights in 52 days and feeling like that i am not a human anymore. I don't have an idea what is going to happen in the future to me.

hi all, if this isn’t the place for this post please delete. I just wanted to see if I can get your opinions on what has been going on with me and many others in a fb group. I was taking a glp1 and stopped after a few months. i was on the lowest dose but I kept having constipation so I figured Id take a break and since I was on the lowest dose. I stopped cold turkey for a few weeks and suddenly felt wrong. Like every part of me was different. I felt like I didn’t have control of my arms and legs, I felt my skin crawling, I couldn’t stop moving , my mouth was twitching, I was having trouble speaking, my mouth couldn’t keep up with my thoughts, I felt like I couldn’t think straight and was so confused all the time, I had SI, harm ocd, ocd and weird mental changes Ive never experienced. I’m a 30 yr old female. I took one dose of sertaline one time in my life and didn’t like it so never took it again. I’ve always had mild anxiety but whatever happened after using the glp1 was a million times worse. I’ve been to the ER 10 times in the last year. They don’t ever find anything and diagnose panic attacks. I see a bunch of different specialists. They are all calling it anxiety but like i said I’ve always had some anxiety but this is so different. I can’t sleep at night. I struggle every day I feel like I’m just surgiving minute to minute. My memories are gone. CognitiveLoy I’m a completely different person. I had to drop out of my masters program, I can’t work, I can’t drive. I’m constantly dizzy, always on edge and overall just a different person than I was. I’m 13 months off of the glp1 and recently Ive been experiencing moments where I feel myself coming back But theyve only been for a half of a day twice in the last 13 months. I don’t know if these are the windows I see others talking about. I also might have the waves as I spent nov-feb in absolute hell and thought I was going to lose my mind and end up in a psych hospital. I can’t manege any stress and was bedridden for a few months during this too. My doctors have not helped at all because they all say that glp1s leave your system within 5 and 1/2 weeks and aren’t known to cause any of the issues I have. But I know i Had nothing like this until the glp1 use. I have pcos and needed to lose 100 lbs that’s why I was on it in the first place. Can anybody tell me if maybe I’m on to something so I can discuss with my doctors and maybe get at least some support from them. Thank you for reading.

I was on Lexapro for four months, tapered over 1.5 months and just stopped taking 5 the lowest dose 3 days ago. Ive been experiencing random hits of pins and needles or tingling sensations that last about a second in my hands and or arms and or chest. It seems to happen randomly with movement, the only time I don't feel it is when I am laying down. I am really freaked out and it is quite bothersome. I am wondering if this could be due to stopping Lexapro? My dr said hes never seen this before since I tapered. I plan to go get scans to rule out nerve problems but it is very distressing. Any insight would be appreciated. The sensations go as soon as they come pretty much but occur a few times a minute it seems.

Hi all,

I read a lot about anxiety, fear, crying spells, ruminating, etc. My experiences in this withdrawal is completely the opposite. Almost complete emotional anesthesia (don’t even feel bad emotions), anhedonia and a blank mind. Its like it’s physically impossible for me to feel emotions or ruminate. Chemically it feels like: Ctrl alt delete.

I also experience really painful head pressure and excruciating head sensations 24/7.

Do others have this as well and have you seen improvements? Feeling nothing is the worse thing that ever happened to me (even tho I can’t even process the severity of it without emotions). It’s inhumane.

I posted this elseware, was pointed to this sub.
33-year-old male, living in Australia.

For about 10 years I have been taking escitalopram at varying dosages. Towards the end I was using 40mg daily.

After some things in my personal life made me question whether the pills were affecting me in a negative way. I decided to go cold turkey, stopping the escitalopram completely around mid-December 2025.

I told the prescribing doctor around 1 month after stopping it. Things have gotten weird since.

- I have lost around 25 kg since January.

- Considerable appetite changes; I eat perhaps half of what I did on the SSRI on a daily basis.

- Food tastes different; I can't exactly describe how it just does.

- Experiencing brain fog, difficulty with logic and connections, losing trains of thought, some tinnitus, occasional dizziness.

- Sleep issues waking before 5 am consistently for the past 1–2 months.

- Emotional flatness, anhedonia, irritability, and depressive thoughts. For a while I had suicidal thoughts; those have mostly subsided. But it isn't really consistent; I will have days where I feel okay, then the next I feel low as shit.

- I have had four thyroid blood tests since January; each shows a low TSH (0.4- 0.26 but normal T3 and T4.

- I had an SVT episode on April 12th; my heart rate hit 200 bpm. Refered to a cardiologist recently.

Honestly, those aren't what's worrying me, though, and this is the weird part that is screwing with my head.

After I gave up the escitalopram, there was a month where I was better than I had ever been. I experienced emotional clarity, motivation, and creativity like I never felt before.

I feel dumb adding this, but I wrote a 96-page screenplay out of nowhere after never having written any fiction before. I would wake up and just write like 6 pages a day. This ended with a gradual decline into the current state.

I don't know what any of this means, if giving up the escitalopram just has a weird long tail or something else.

I would really prefer not to go on the SSRIs again. I emailed the prescribing doctor my symptoms; she hasn't gotten back to me yet.

I should also mention I have ADHD and 40 mg of Ritalin a day.

I was on the SSRI's for so long I dont know what I am like off of them, what can I expect. I also pumped my symptoms into Claude and it mentioned it may point to Bipolar 2.

I took my last dose of Escitalopram (Lexapro) on 26/01/26, so have been off for 3 months. I was on it for about a year, before that I was on Sertraline for about a year before switching due to side effects. I tapered very slowly over a 6-month period so didn’t rush to go cold turkey.

My decision to taper was due to emotional numbing, low motivation and generally feeling disconnected from everything around me. Sure, I felt no anxiety but I didn’t feel happy either and like I had lost myself.

Since discontinuing the medication, I haven’t felt stable. The first month I felt completely numb and no different from when I was on the medication. By the second month I was feeling very irritable and quick to lose my temper. Like I was constantly under tension.

Most recently I have been getting very anxious and emotional. I feel like I could cry at the drop of a hat and feeling a lot of anxiety in my chest that comes out of nowhere, usually from when I wake up in the morning. Have also noticed my appetite has gone and I’ve lost weight, no food appeals to me and it’s hard to get motivated for things. Have had stomach upset too.

I have had some days of feeling better but it never lasts and I’ll find myself slowly slipping back into a negative state which feels uncontrollable.

I have seen some people say it takes 6-8 months to feel even slightly levelled out after stopping so I’m looking for some reassurance from those who have got through it and any advice for surviving it all!

Just feeling very sad and panicky about the whole thing, many people seem to just suggest that I need to try another medication which I do not want to do ☹

Are the symptoms you experience during the waves always the same? Or can they vary/change?

I'm in withdrawal for almost a year and a half now :') and I think I am experiencing some new symptoms, but I'm not sure that it's related or if something else is wrong with me that I should checkout.

For a few days now I've been waking up during the night sweating very heavily, like my whole body is wet. It's not a fever; my heartrate is normal and I also not feel very hot or cold.

Is it common for new symptoms to flare up after such a long time?

FYI I took mirtazapine for 2 years and didn't really taper (followed my psychs bad advise unfortunately) before I came off in december 2024.

I always had issues with intimacy. Not with libido or sexual desire or having an orgasm, but being comfortable enough with someone to be vulnerable and physically intimate. It was my biggest insecurity and brought me a lot of shame.

I worked hard to distract myself. I focused on school, spent years in a competitive program and stressful job. I hated it. Was in an insanely stressful pressure cooker for a solid decade. In the end, the shame and academic/corporate grind made depressed.

I went on ssri so that I wouldn’t fall behind in work.

Two years later, I finally meet someone. I was in my 30s and finally found someone who I was comfortable with. My first boyfriend. I couldn’t believe I found him. He was patient and kind. I decided to go off my ssri so that my libido would come back and I could finally explore physical intimacy with someone who I felt safe with and loved. Only to find that my libido and orgasms died, replaced by rage and complete indifference to sex and a romantic relationship.

Welp. I lost him because of my lack of libido. It’s been 17 months since I stopped my ssri. 8 since the break up.

Just crazy you wait decades for that person and physical intimacy and closeness. And when it comes, is exactly when your body and mind stop working.

Cosmic irony.

Extremely bad akathisia cold turkeying zoloft and seroquel. Reinstated Zoloft by not seroquel at the time, greenhorn to protracted withdrawals, panicking looking anywhere online.

I am still in a windows and waves pattern but akathisia is unbearable, 3.5 years out I am husked out, there is nothing there, barely held together by strings. Nasty stuff, seriously considering mirtazapine only if it can mitigate the akathisia. I can deal with everything else, but not that

This must be a common theme or question that is asked but I think about taking mirtazapine and just taking it forever, I don't have much else to lose. I tried 3.75mg of it and my legs starting moving like crazy, I couldn't stop it. Out of panic I went up to 7.5mg and I conked out.

I am trying very very hard to hold on, I am the same person I was 3.5 years ago. There is only so much wisdom to be gained when looking back but it means nothing if I don't live to look back on it and do advocacy for withdrawal syndromes.