Weaning Myself Off Antidepressants

Exciting news: I’m off all antidepressants for the first time in eight-and-a-half years! Going off them has been s-l-o-w going because I haven’t been willing to put up with any withdrawal symptoms, which even my doctor’s modest titration schedule resulted in. While I would never advise anyone to adjust their antidepressants without a doctor’s supervision, I’m sharing how I avoided withdrawal symptoms in case it helps anyone in a similar situation.

Wellbutrin was the easiest. I was taking four 100 mg tablets each day and cut back 100 mg every few weeks and had no symptoms.

Lamictal was next. I had a backlog from a mail order prescription, so instead of getting a prescription for a lower dose, I cut the tablets into smaller and smaller pieces as time went on. If I felt withdrawal symptoms, I’d take another small piece, effectively increasing the dose. It took me a couple months before finally stopping.

Cymbalta was the difficult one. With a starting dose 60 mg, even reducing by 10 mg was too much for me. My solution was inelegant and imprecise — and not medically recommended: I opened the capsules and counted out the pellets inside, subtracting a greater amount each week. Having a pharmacist divide the meds or, at the very least, using a scale would have been smarter, but I had another accumulation of meds from a mail order prescription, was impatient, and didn’t want to buy a scale just for this purpose.

It took some fiddling to determine the right amount to decrease by and how frequently to do so. There were about 220 pellets to begin with. By the time I got to 120, I was opening each capsule and counting up instead of down. I’d drop by 10 pellets every week. When I was down to about 50 pellets, I started dropping by five pellets every five days. The whole process took more than six months, but I did it with no increase in depression-like symptoms and no other withdrawal effects, like brain zaps, wooziness, or dizziness.

After a week being off all the drugs, I wrote: “I’m a little more teary — both sad and happy tears — though I find it hard to believe that five pellets of Cymbalta can really make a difference. Maybe I’m more emotive because of the work I’ve been doing in therapy. Or maybe my emotions are no longer dulled by drugs.”

Now that a couple more weeks have passed, I’ll admit that I definitely feel more non-specific sadness, a sort of generalized depression, than I did when I was on the meds. This could be a recurrence in depression symptoms or withdrawal symptoms. Again, it seems strange that going from only five pellets of Cymbalta a day to none could be the culprit in either case, but even just five pellets are the difference between some and none.

According to this Harvard Women’s Health Watch newsletter, if you take a dose of the medication and the symptoms stop immediately, it’s withdrawal and not a recurrence of depression. I finally gave in and tested this today. With only five pellets, the generalized sadness that’s been plaguing me lifted within a couple hours. So I may go back to taking a few pellets a day. I’d prefer to be off it entirely, but I’d much rather be on the drugs than slip into another depression.

Lest you’re worried about me, know that I’m being vigilant, tracking my mood carefully, and am keeping my therapist/naturopath updated on my symptoms, so I don’t relapse. I’ve been on antidepressants most of my adult life and really want to know what I’m like without them, especially now that I have tools for dealing with emotions that I’ve never had before. Still, I’m not willing to risk a slide into depression to find out, so I’m being extremely cautious.