Fluoxetine :: My Journey With Prozac
Nov 6, 2015
I've decided to document my journey starting prozac/fluoxetine as a way to cope and record my progress, as well as possibly help others!
Day 1 (Wednesday, Oct. 28):
I was prescribed 10mg of prozac this day and took it early, around 8:30. I had been suffering depression and anxiety which came out of nowhere for 5 weeks and decided to start medication. This was a normal depressed day, but it faded 80% at 6:00 like usual. I went to dinner with a friend and felt somewhat good
Day 2:
Bad morning anxiety. I think I was depressed most of the day, it did gt better around 6:00pm.
Day 3:
I woke up with my usual morning anxiety and bad diarrhea. But on this Friday I had an exam and noticed after that my intrusive thoughts had started to fade! They were still there but didn't scare me (fear of death, fear of time running out). I went home to visit my family this day and felt happier, though tired at times.
Day 4:
I was very busy Halloween day. Me and my siblings drove all around town to find last minute details for their costumes.I noticed around 2 that I was feeling down again. By 6:30, I had forgotten my worries and was in the moment! I enjoyed my night
Day 5:
Struggled to eat in the morning. Felt like gagging when I tried to take a bite, but I forced it down anyways. I was at a park trying to relax but the anxiety/butterflies feeling was strong. Throughout the day I had bouts of crying and hopelessness. At 4 I felt great again, not perfect but good!
Day 6:
Monday morning I had to go back to my apartment and say bye to the family. I have to increase to 20mg on Wednesday so I did around 13mg today. Bad morning anxiety like usual, and around 10:30 I had a complete breakdown and cried driving back. My mom talked with me over the phone for awhile to help me get through. I went to class and around 2:30, I noticed something weird. I wanted to listen to my music! I love music but haven't been able to listen to anything these past few weeks. I felt 99%! I was so happy, I actually went out to my favorite restaurant alone for the first time in awhile. Great day, no relapse!
Day 7:
Today the morning anxiety was pretty bad. I took 15 mg to prepare for the 2 tomorrow. I had a major, major panic attack as bad as my first one ever, I started crying uncontrollably. It lasted 1 minute because I stopped myself and asked "Am I going to let anxiety do this to me?" I took .5mg of xanax (which never helps me) and much to my surprise, I felt soooo normal at 1:30! I even danced around the room. Later that night I went to a movie with a friend and noticed a small amount of anxiety, like a slight gagging feeling. It strangely didn't go away at night like usual, but today was still pretty great! No depression today.
Day 8:
Increased to 20mg today. I had really bad morning anxiety and went for m CBT, we did a meditation exercise where you breath and imagine an ocean and I literally was having more anxiety! SO around 10:45 I took a xanax... I thought I was going to pass out. I just wanted to sleep all day. It was very hard to go to class after being in bed so long. At home I just tried to watch TV and distract myself. Didn't feel better in the evening like I usually do which was strange. Heightened anxiety all day!
Day 9:
Horrible day. Morning anxiety and bad, bad diarrhea. I could barely eat today, I had a small piece of pizza, and later on a smoothie. I stayed in bed most of the day which is very strange for me, but luckily my friend came around 5. I still had low anxiety, but had a better time a night.
Day 10:
I was on the verge of a panic attack in the car today, but I wanted to stay calm for my friend. I couldn't eat so I drank half of a smoothie. My friend left today around 10 am. When I got home, I had bad diarrhea and started crying. I took .25mg of xanax. So I climbed in bed and started writing this which has helped, I do feel less anxious. But the intrusive thoughts are starting to depress me again, although they are manageable.
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I am really struggling with sleep at the moment .... i am finding that i get off ok, but then wake up at around 3 am and then find it really hard to drift off again.
I went to the GP this morning as the lack of sleep is really affecting me - I can't concentrate, my memory is shocking and I feel so lethargic. I did wonder if it was my depression but the doc explained that I have 'Prozac Insomnia'. Great, I thought - I'm not imagining this! I had hoped that she might prescribe me something to help me sleep - but no, i came away with some leaflets and the ever welcomed suggestion to 'hang on in there'.
I have been on Flu for about 5 weeks and although i do feel slightly better, this not sleeping is knocking me back. Feel like all my progress has been undone and I'm at my wits end ....
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I'm currently trying to wean myself of gabapentin was given them for my hip op, nerve pain but i have been taking them now because of the high i get and that they seem to make my depression and general state of well being much better....but i was prescribed flux 5 days ago now and wondered if it is ok to take both? i take flux at night and gabapentin through the day. My only side effects with the flux is nausea/sick feeling and feeling spaced out and a bit disconnected but the are seeming to help me cope better with the depression/anger issues i have.
just wanted to know about the gabba as they are addictive and im finding that withdrawing off gabapentin is making my depression state of mind worse?
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I have been on Prozac 4 months and 2 of them were better and now I'm going back to the way I was before. What do I do now? I'm so miserable and don't understand why this is happening plus I'm pregnant.
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I'm a female in my early 30s and in May this year, out of the blue at work, I became lightheaded to the point I thought I might faint. I suddenly felt sensitive to light. I tried eating some fruit thinking I was low in blood sugar but it didn't help. It didn't go away after a day or 2 so I went to the doctor who said it was probably an inner ear virus that would go away on its own after about a week. Sure enough after about 4 days I felt better.
Then, in July the same sudden on-set of dizziness occurred but this time after a week it hadn't gone away. I would not describe the dizziness as traditional vertigo where the room spins but a more general light headedness that made me uncomfortable but not to the point of nausea.
I went back to the doctor who gave me every blood test under the sun, a 24 hour urine test and an ECG. Tests for those were all clear. In the meantime my symptoms were evolving. I was now getting a racing heart along with my light headedness and my dizziness was getting worse.
I went back and saw a different doctor who thought I might have BPV (benign positional vertigo)and sent me off to a specialist physiotherapist to be tested for this. The physio tests came back negative for BPV but he thought it might be some nerves in my neck being affected and started treating those.
Meanwhile, I was not getting better, in fact I was getting worse. The dizziness was constantly hovering in the background and my dizzy spells would flair up several times a day and last for around 1.5 - 2 hours. During this time I couldn't concentrate and was worried that I was going to throw up or pass out (although I never did). I would get light sensitive, a racing heart, tingling in my left arm and hand and sometimes the feeling that I couldn't get enough air/chest tightness. I couldn't trigger these attacks with head positioning - it just seemed random when they would come on.
I started to think that I had anxiety although I thought this would be out of character for me. One day driving home I had such a severe attack that my whole left arm felt numb, my left hand was tingling, I thought I was going to have a heart attack, I could barely concentrate enough to drive and burst into tears when I got home. I started to get afraid to leave the house in case I had an attack but had to as I work full time.
I went back to the doctor and got a referral for an Ear, Nose, Throat (ENT) specialist. The doctor also advised me it was probably not anxiety as I didn't have all the symptoms of that. I had to wait a couple of weeks for the ENT appointment during which time my symptoms persisted although I didn't have a major attack like the car incident again. Just these dizzy spells, racing heart, restricted breathing for 1.5-2 hours at a time. Interestingly enough, I had to fly for work at this point and the plane trip didn't seem to make any major difference to my condition.
The ENT sent me for a neurology/balance test along with a MRI to rule out brain tumour or MS. Another 2 weeks later I went back to see the ENT and get my results. Tests were all clear. By now I had spent $1000 on medical treatment.
The ENT advised me that I most likely had an inner ear virus and that there is nothing I could do to treat it and just had to wait for it to go away on its own. He said it could last up to 6 months. He advised to keep active - go walking, do gardening etc and get the balance system to re-adjust itself while waiting for the virus to go away.
All of the above occurred over a 3 month period. It's now been nearly 5 months since the symptoms started in July. I can still feel the light headedness hovering in the background ready to strike most times, and am living with a nearly constant anxious/nervous feeling in my chest which flairs up to a racing heart at least once a day. I'm only having the random dizzy attacks every few days now and it seems to be getting less frequent with time. I still get flair ups if I get carried away with being too active like bending up and down a lot washing the car. For a couple of hours afterwards I feel dizzy but it goes away. When I do have a dizzy attack it is less severe then it used to be as well.
Apart from the feelings of anxiety that this experience has triggered in me (which I still don't know if they are side effects of the inner ear issue or anxiety related to anticipation) it has also made me somewhat of a hypochondriac which never used to be the case. I'm hyper-sensitive to my body now and any sharp pain or cramp scares me and I think the worst eg. pain in leg = blood clot. I'm hoping once I get back to feeling normal again this hypochondria will go away too.
This worst part of all of this is that because you look normal on the outside, not sick, people don't understand how bad it really is to live with. Even my original doctor didn't seem to understand the impact it was having on me and my ability to perform my normal functions like doing my job.
I look forward to the day, which hopefully is in the not to distant future, where I feel normal again. I hope this post has helped give hope to others who may be in the same situation. It feels like it will never end, but it will get better, slowly, but it will.
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I am 18 years old and have 1 semester left of high school. i started smoking marijuana when i was 15. i lived in a small town but made friends with a person that could get me whatever amount i could pay for as fast as he got the text asking. i now live in the next town over which is a very small city and have several people in my contacts that know to ask on a weekly basis how much i need without me texting them first. my parents are divorced and i live with my mom. my mom works out of state, so she gets up at 4 am and is home around 730-8 pm. so she is never around to know what is happening at home. she works with lawyers and makes excellent money so getting money for my addiction has never been a problem. iv been smoking close to non-stop since the time i've started,but have also been smoking cigarettes for the same amount of time.
i have tried several times in the past to stop (i say stop because out of the other times i have tried i have used the term "quit" which is a more permanent term and puts more anxiety on me when i think about weed on my attempts to stop). my most successful time was this past summer when i was working with my cousin that owns his own construction business. since my entire family shuns people like me who smoke anything or are not straight edge i did not do it before i went to work for him so he wouldn't know. and it was also easier to cut back because i was working for him almost every day, which put me around people that did not smoke and did not even talk about it. right now most of the people in my town and around me smoke (except for my mother which does not know about this addiction because i have tried to bring it up in the past but the way she handles it puts me in a position were im to stressed out and resort back to it) i can walk down my street and ask a random person if they know were i can get weed and can most likely get weed (i have done this several times and it has worked) so its been hard trying to find someone that can help me through the withdrawls without tempting me back into it.
im on my 3rd day without weed. i went cold turkey after the new year. the withdrawal symtoms that i can see right now is that my sleep is not what it used to be. i just can't fall asleep as peacefully as before when i smoked and i cant stay asleep either. my appetite is lower, though i eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner so that's not a concern. i also don't want to go out in public that much anymore or do things. and when i get into a stressful situation i don't know how to overcome that stress because i used to always resort to weed to help. i've tried reading and doing stress workouts but they don't seem to help calm that voice that says "hey everything will be better once you get weed" and the two biggest and hardest symptoms is that when i don't have something to do, or start thinking about the time that i have free now, i feel depressed and bored and worried. because smoking used to take up that time and i felt happy and relaxed even when i was just sitting there high. the second thing is that i know im addicted. but at times when people tell me that you cant get addicted to weed and i start to think of how fine i feel without it i feel as though they are right and that i can smoke this one time with that person without starting to do it constantly again. but that is how i kept getting back into it in the past.
i need to stop because i really want to join the army which would keep me out of smoking weed but the big step is to stop it now so i can join. i have started to talk to a recruiter and can be sent out for boot camp in 9 months. but if i don't find a way to overcome the willingness to smoke i won't be able to go. i would appreciate so much if people could share with me how they overcame the urges, especially around other smokers and on weekends when that was my get out and smoke with a lot of other smokers time. and other things that helped people out.
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i've been diagnosed with GAD and OCD and my doctor prescribe me prozat 20mg/a day and xanax 1mg split; 0.25mg...0.25mg....and 0.5mg before bed
this is my second day and it seems everything fine unless some side effects..(drowsiness; dizziness; headache; nausea...if someone had/has on this medication?? share with me your experiences
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I have been on lexapro and latuda for over 2 years. I have been completely stable with my anxiety and depression.. my husband n I decided that we wanted to have another baby.. the doctor told me the best thing to do was switch to prozac.. I withdrew from latuda n lexapro within 2 weeks .. and started 30mgs of prozac.. I had every side effect known to the prozac where I had to be hospitalized for 5 days .. I went thru hell for 3 weeks hoping the prozac would kick in and the side effects would go away but that never did.. while in the hospital they stopped the prozac and put me back on latuda n lexapro .. I'm still having alot of anxiety .. nausea .. sleeping issues.. I just started the lexapro and latuda this monday and stopped prozac fully sunday.. does anyone know when this anxiety and depression will stabilize again.. I can't take the fear.. panic.. n anxiety anymore.. will I be normal again?
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how long does it take prozac to kick in?
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anyone else who finds it hard to come off Prozac?
My last attempt to come off Prozac lasted almost a year. I have tried so hard...but I am finally admitting defeat. I am going to ask for a new prescription tomorrow. It feels like this little capsule that twenty years ago was my savior has now become my captor. It is with feeling of utter failure and slight despair that I take these pills again. I feel I have no choice. The worst thing is, I don't understand why I hate it so much.
I was on Prozac for almost twenty years until I weaned myself off almost a year ago. This was one of many attempts. During those twenty years, I was never completely comfortable taking it. I was grateful for how it worked, how it changed my life, but for some reason that I could never shake off, I just didn't like the the idea of being on medication every day. I was not at ease with the idea of having to be on a prescription - of being dependent on this little green and cream capsule - simply to feel normal like everyone else. My GP could never understand when I talked about coming off it. He would more or less say, its working for you - why change things? Just take it, and forget about it. I still don't understand why I am so uncomfortable about taking it.
I thought in the beginning, that I would be cured of my depression and anxiety, and go back to the happy person I was, then when I was 'fixed' I would stop taking it. I was told then it was not 'addictive', and it WAS only for the short term. So how come, every time I came off...I not only suffered the most awful symptoms..I also felt 100 times worse than I did before I started taking it? It is like Prozac has changed my brain, so I am dependent on it simply to have any quality of life.
With Prozac, I am relatively content, I enjoy socializing, I can run a house and 'look after' my family and my ageing parents. Simply, I just get on with my life which is a good one.
Without Prozac, I am anxious and irritable all of the time. I feel far, far worse than I EVER did in the before I went on on it. I thought I was depressed then....but from what I remember it was never as bad as this. Its hard to explain, but it is like it is self fulfilling... like Prozac itself is causing my mental health problems. I panic at the thought of having to do anything that involves social evenings, sometimes I can't even cope with trivial or ordinary things like organizing meals, or making lists. It all seems too overwhelming so I just don't do it. I get completely worked up about nothing. I fly into rages and feel awful afterwards. I wake in the morning with a nervous tummy and terrible anxiety about the day. When I physically get up and get on with it I feel better...but I can lie for an hour in bed in the morning feeling sick with nerves, and cannot find a 'place' to go in my head that is pleasant. It is always doom and gloom, and anger and sadness....and recently I have been contemplating all sorts of ways of leaving it all behind me. I can't live like this any more.
I guess it is just a case of getting my head to the point where I can see Prozac as a friend and not the enemy. I guess I blame it for getting me where I am in the first place - totally dependent on it. It's like, I have no choice in the matter. This is not how I usually live my life. I feel defeated and overpowered, even though the outcome is to my benefit. Its hard to explain. I mean, what if they find out it causes tumors, or my doctor just decides to stop prescribing it down the line. I feel trapped, no matter how I look at it.
I guess I would tell anyone thinking of going onto this drug that it is like a pitcher plant. Once you are in, you are in it forever no matter how much you try to scramble up the sides. It is not just a case of take it till you get well, then thank it, and move on. Prozac has you in its grip forever. From my experience.. I would say only start it if you can accept the fact it probably WILL be for life.
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I've been on Prozac about a week and a half and it isn't agreeing with me. My anxiety is the worse at ever been and I can't leave the house. My doctor wants to switch me to Zoloft. The main reason her and I agreed to try Prozac first was because I'm terrified of gaining weight. I'm 23 and already have a major weight issue. I took lexapro as a teen and gained tons of weight. So, I am wondering, does anyone notice any significant weight changes on Zoloft? Also, how do people find Zoloft to help with anxiety?
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I have been signed off work for the last 6 months with depression. I was prescribed Prozac, the dose of which was doubled after a few weeks, but I didn't find it helped with my anxiety.
A trip to Morrisons puts me in panic mode, I recently had to renew my passport at the Post Office and was sick on the way home as it caused me so much distress.
I stopped taking the Prozac cold turkey a few weeks ago and didn't have any problems. I didn't feel and better or any worse.
I have now been prescribed 30mg Mirtazapine - my first tablet will be this evening. However, I have read bad things about the side affects, I don't want to put on weight or feel any more down and sleepy than I already do.
Are there any positives to this medication - surely there must be!
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My downfall is my dizziness / lightheadedness
I'm 22 with no life. I would love it back.
Been on them 2 weeks.
Can you take calms magnesium with it? As I want to try it?
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I was prescribed Prozac and and have been on 10 for 3 weeks then went up to 20 2 weeks ago. I've been so nauseous,feeling like I'm gonna throw up and worsened anxiety and depersonalization. So my doctor told me to stop and switched me to lexapro 10 mg when will I notice a change?
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Came off Lexapro 40 mg bout week and a half ago and have been on prozac 20mg for 2.5 weeks. Dr upped it today to 40 mg.
First week and a half on prozac 20mg i felt agitated and really really anxious...panicky often...racing thoughts, felt like i was going crazy.
But this morning just woke up totally depressed..cried all day pretty much, no motivation, huge brainfog, extremely tired, low concentration, not interested in doing anything- not enough concentration to do anything. Don't feel like eating.
I am wondering if it is too low dose after coming off Lexapro 40 mg...or maybe it just hasn't kicked in yet all....can anyone, from their own experience, shed some light on this....i am feeling completely lost!
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new to this Flu stuff. Have read the sheet with the tabs and it said nothing about taking it and still drinking alcohol so I am curious if this is a bad combination or just "not good".
Don't drink a lot but I do like the odd glass of wine with dinner.
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I hope you're all making progress and feeling better.
I'll cut a long story short - I was taken off fluoxetine because I went really downhill. My Psychiatrist has given me Duloxetine which is an SSNI. It works on serotonin and nor.....?? I can't remember the spelling.
I'm reluctant to take it right now because I went on the forum for Duloxetine and haven't found many posts at all!! I think there are about 4-5 posts!!
Have any of you had this medication before? Any advice about what I should do? I don't mind the side effects, I'm just worried that my head's going to get messed up further.
Apart from all that, I feel a bit better having posted on here this morning cos I've not been on the forum for a while.
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I came of mirtazapine a few months ago and was put on fluoxetine which sadly didn't work. I now want to go back on mirtazapine and was wondering if I will still get the same effect they had on me the first time. Ie good appetite and better sleep.
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I'm about 6 wks on flu now and had at last a few good days this week, less nausea brighter mood, more energy -very welcome feeling.
Think having a blip today as feeling very sad and cried for first time in a while. I'm sure it's just a random 'not so good' day as a few tests over the last week have meant hospital visits, not eating before hand, taking meds different times and long days. So i'm trying to take it on the chin and hope tomorrow is better.
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This is my 2nd wk on flu and can tell im going to stick with it & haven't had much side effects, i was on sertraline that made me very ill for 4 weeks & doc put me straight away on 20mg flu so i suppose i had some benefit,
I feel alot better but still have the low levels of anxiety as u has took the edge of, im still finding it difficult to go out and socialise again & to go back to work, i think i may be ready for 40 mg as iv come to a stand still?
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Oh please. How long does it take to feel a bit better?
Am now on day 7 of the medication. Very bad palpitations and numbness.
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