Hi there!
My name is Sterre, and I feel very happy to have stumbled upon this forum! My English may not be the best, it is not my native language, but hopefully it will be readable.

I am from the Netherlands, and slowly tapering off my antidperessant for more than over a year now.

I started tapering off on April 26 2011, after 16 years of usage. Off course I tried to taper off before, but I did it to fast ( almost cold turkey) and suffered from terrible withdrawal symptoms. At the time I did not regognize them to be withdrawal symptoms, but was amazed that I suffered from psychological symptoms that I never entered before. My P-doc at the time, told me I was relapsing and gave me another prescreption of AD's.
As the good gullible girl I am, I started the new AD's again, only to find out, that I gained weight rapidly, and got into a lethargic and depressed state.

I dicussed how very unhappy I felt with my P-doc and we got into a fight, because she did not believe the weight gain was from the AD's, and explained my lethargic state to being a mental problem.

Sure!

I contacted my pharmacist and asked about withdrawal symptoms. The information he gave me, opend my eyes, as I understood that my former relapse, was in fact severe withdrawal.
I decided to taper of my new antidepressants, and that caused a break up with my P-doc. She was furiuos to hear that I decided not to take any more AD's, and warned me that I would become depressed again.

In the 16 years of taking AD's ( diffent ones, from Fevarine, to Wellburtin, to Lexapro, and some cocktails of those combined) I developped chronic depression. Before starting the AD's, I did not suffer from chronic depression but from anxiety attacks.

Living 16 years without a significant libido, feeling tired all the time, blurry vision, pain in my joints, and so on, is a long time.
The AD's innitially helped with the anxiety, but they simultaniuosly worsend or triggerd my depressions. I got more and more depressed,instead of less depressed.
So more AD's were prescribed. Cocktails, benzo's,sleeping pills, they all were mixed together, in a daiy dose.
And I still was not feeling any better!


In this year of tapering, I did not have one depressed episode. Sure I felt depressed sometimes, but never for long. My feelings of depression now are sometims 4 days in a row, instead of the weeks/months they where before the tapering.

So now I am here, determined to get of those poisinous pills, and never to touch one again!