that article was indeed very interesting, supporting that dropping off at 1 or 2mg is a bad idea as you would still have between 10 and 20% of your receptors downregulated. jesus, we have al been so badly duped.
anyway, yes Citalopram is the same dosing as paxil etc BUT the potency is less than paxil I think, I have seen comflicting dosing charts, some show that 20mg is the same as 20 paxil, some saying that 40mg citalopram is the equivilent in POTENCY to 20mg paxil.
personally I believe it takes around 5 months for the body/brain to catch up with a drop, I say that because of the 5-9 month worstening, my brain registered my CT and went mad at 5 months off. It seems that it could well have been the 4mg-2mg drop that caused my recent trip back into acute hell, 5 months to the day of that drop...thats a possibility isnt it? I now await the 9 month mark from that same drop with fear as I have seen people have a terrible wave at 9 months and think its possible that I will feel the impact of that.
HOWEVER I need to remind myself that although yes I did go back into acute hell at 5 months after the 50% drop, it only lasted around 2/3 weeks, I hadnt seen one day of ANY improvement for 8 months prior to that. of course im still living a total nightmare now but am able to function and even find some small glimmers of enjoyment in the day when my symptoms are not as strong. so if it does hit me at 9 months Im hoping that the acute phase will only last a few weeks, its all I have to hang onto.
The good news is that after that big drop from 4-2mg I have taken things really quite slowly, its been 5 months that I have tapered from 1.5 to 0.56 so 5 months to taper off 1mg, thats quite slow isnt it? so Im hoping that once I hit that 9 months from the last big drop I can breathe a small (very small) sigh of relief that any drops I feel from then onwards were much MUCH smaller.
So, if 5mg downregulates 80%, hmm let me do some working out
so 1mg would downregulate 16% of receptors
0.5mg 8%
0.25 4%
0.12 2%
0.06 1%
0.03 - 0.5%
0.01 - 0.25%
hmmmm, my plan therefore is this
drops
0.56 - 1 more week
0.40 hold for 6 weeks
0.32
0.24 NOW ON 4% OF RECEPTORS
0.16
0.12 NOW ON 2% RECEPTORS
0.08
0.04 BASICALLY O.5% RECEPTORS
0.03
0.02
0.01 0.25% receptors
now, 0.01 of a mg is the smallest graduation on the syringe, I have put that amount on my hand and it is literally 1 drop of titrated liquid, 1 tiny droplet...so the only way to get a smaller amount would be to instead of titrating the 2mg drop of citalopram liquid with 5ml water, to titrate it with 10ml water...this would then half the amount so I would go down to 0.005mg - this would mean the drug would be working on only 0.12% of my receptors...hmm, maybe still too much but Ill cross that bridge when I come to it...perhaps double the titration again and go to 0.0025 therefore affecting 0.06% receptors?
why oh why dont Drs know about all this, I know Healy is the only one who is acctually trying to find out what the hell is going on in our brains, if only there was funding, I think the only way they will ever know is when technology has move3d on to the point that we have brain scans that can actually detenct the state of the receptors and measure chemical levels, maybe that will happen in our lifetime?
(no pig emotican but I liked this one)
Originally Posted by Luc
