The subtle effects of an SSRI

One of the things that has puzzled me as my dose of Paxil has gotten lower is the way that old friends marvel at all the changes they see in me.  Even causal, but long time, acquaintances say that I seem like a completely different person.  They’re even people who I haven’t told about my Paxil tapering.  Somehow, I’ve transformed in front of their eyes over the past year.  I haven’t questioned them too closely about how I’ve changed, even though I’m very curious.  To me, I seem exactly the same.  I’ve always been “me”, haven’t I? I keep looking for specific things that I do differently, but they seem like little things.  I don’t interrupt other people’s conversations to say something that just popped into my head anymore.  I think that’s different.  Still, that seems like a small personality change, not something that people would notice immediately.

That changed a bit yesterday.  I had a difficult day at work.  I was configuring two routers in our network to talk to each other for a customer.  The interfaces weren’t built, the NNI was designed on the wrong router, I had to redistribute MPLS routes across two different sections of our edge network.  Suffice to say, it got complicated.  And, it lasted for 14 hours.  By the time I got home, I had only eaten a few candy bars in the previous 36 hours and I was dead tired.  I stuffed a couple cheese sandwiches in my mouth and went to bed.  I had to be back at work 7 hours later.

This morning, I woke up tired and grumpy.  I had a bit of a persecution complex as I showered and watched the DVR from last night.  I shuffled into work and started getting ready for the day.  A friend of mine asked if I was going slomo today.  Everyone else noticed the difference, too.  “Are you ok?” “How late did you stay last night? I left at 10 and you were still here.”

I realized that I was feeling the same way I had felt every day while I was on 40mg/day of Paxil.  I never seemed to get enough sleep, and I was always irritated.  There were long stretches where I would sleep for 12-14 hours a night, and still wake up exhausted.  Every little thing annoyed me.  I didn’t contribute at work, I just went through the motions.  The difference today was that irritated feeling faded away like it would for a normal person.  By the end of the day, I was joking and helping my next door neighbor with a config.  In my Paxil days it would have lingered all day, and I would have gone home much as I had left it, irritated and tired.

I didn’t think yesterday was a good day.  Looking back, it was pretty good.  I got the customer working eventually, and I learned something about the ways that I’ve changed since I started tapering off Paxil.  It turns out, Paxil made me feel like I was working on an intractable problem for 16 hours a day, every day.

Repetitive Thoughts in SSRI Withdrawal

SSRI withdrawal symptoms can range quite a bit.  There are physical symptoms, emotional symptoms, mood symptoms, and bizarre symptoms.  One of the more difficult symptoms to deal with are repetitive and recursive thoughts.  These are thoughts that keep repeating over and over again in the mind.  They can be about anything.  Sometimes, they feel like a dark mantra that won’t stop.

I talked to a person in withdrawal who repeated the same sentence for four hours.  “If only I could…”  It varied a little bit over time, but it didn’t really change for that whole conversation.  Repetitive thoughts grip your mind and won’t let go.  It’s very hard to break out of the mental cul de sac that they create.  Everything you try to replace it with inevitably leads back to the central thought.  Usually, the thought is a regret, or a memory.  It’s very common to critically review the past in withdrawal.  Somehow, the past becomes incredibly important and inescapable.  In our society, we grow up believing that the emotional and intellectual parts of the mind are separate.  “Mind over matter”, “Walk it off”, “Pick yourself up and go on”.  In reality, the intellectual and emotional parts of our minds are two sides of the same coin.  You can’t ignore one without damaging the other.

The first thing to do in combating a repetitive thought is to recognize it as one.  That seems like an obvious thing, but it’s not as clear in withdrawal.  Even irrational thoughts take on a certainty and weight that they wouldn’t normally have.  For a “normal” person, the memory of pulling a girl’s hair in kindergarten would be a passing regret.  In withdrawal, that regret becomes the centerpiece of an elaborate story about self inadequacy.  I was a terrible person for pulling her hair.  That has only grown as I have grown, and now I am the result of a lifetime’s worth of regret.  That’s the thought process in withdrawal.  It sounds remarkably like a diagnostic marker of depression, and it is.  That’s why withdrawal is often misdiagnosed as a new or existing condition.  The difference is that withdrawal is iatrogenic, caused by the drug, not a condition.

The thing that makes it hard to recognize a repetitive thought in withdrawal is that each step from the original thought feels natural.  The progression from the memory of pulling a kindergartener’s hair to a dark assessment of your adult life seems rational and correct.  We naturally filter out the more wild connections our minds are capable of making and don’t realize that something’s wrong when that check is missing.  In withdrawal, you need to make a conscious effort to moderate thought.  That’s not very easy when the thoughts are so persistent.

Breaking the cycle of repetitive thoughts is something that takes practice.  Being mindful of your thoughts is a frustrating thing at first.  It can feel like you’re just watching as things fall apart in front of you.  It’s important to keep trying to control those thoughts, though.  It starts with recognizing that a particular chain of thoughts is originating from withdrawal.  If you notice that the whole chain of thoughts keeps referring back to a single event to propel it, that is most likely withdrawal related.  It’s almost impossible to “discard” a whole chain of thought, but recognizing it can help in dealing with it.  Try to focus on something else, something with its own chain, like a story or a game.  It may not be in keeping with the societal norm of heroically overcoming a struggle to reach the happy ending, but the goal is to overcome, not to be a hero.

Inside the SSRI bunker

SSRI withdrawal is a notoriously variable thing. For most people, the symptoms vary from day to day, even hour to hour. This variability makes planning a day in withdrawal very difficult and leads to a general fear of the future and an inability to plan ahead because of anxiety about which “me” will show up tomorrow. Withdrawal also breeds a profound desire to withdraw from life and other people. It’s sometimes hard to deal with your own internal state, let alone social interactions.

It’s still important to try to push the boundaries of personal comfort during withdrawal. One of the strange aspects of withdrawal is that it’s very hard to tell when symptoms are improving. Often, the best way to gauge progress is during a social interaction. You may notice that today’s trip to the market didn’t produce as much stress as last week. Even though your internal state may feel the same, having a successful trip outside can show you subtle signs of progress. Getting out can also be a way to “make” progress happen. Powering through an encounter can provide confidence going forward.

Withdrawal is not just an emotional or intellectual problem, though. It’s also an imbalance of neurotransmitters. After having Serotonin levels managed artificially by the SSRI, it takes a while for the brain to find a new balance. serotonin is intimately involved in our emotional state. As much as we would like to believe that we can control our emotional state, our minds are much more complex than that. The mind has intellectual and instinctual elements. It’s important to heal both aspects during withdrawal. Just as you wouldn’t “walk off” a broken leg, you can’t push through some of the symptoms of withdrawal. The broken bone analogy is apt when discussing withdrawal. When recovering from a broken bone, it’s important to exercise to speed healing, but over doing it can actually set back recovery. The same applies to SSRI withdrawal. Pushing the emotional boundaries of withdrawal can speed healing and make for a stronger internal mental state. Likewise, pushing through social interactions that produce a lot of fear or stress can set back recovery.

It’s important to manage stress during withdrawal. It’s hard to apply general principles to it because each person’s tolerance to stress is different. An individual’s stress tolerance can change over time, too. Since withdrawal follows a chaotic pattern, it’s hard to manage. The only way to manage stress is to take it day by day, even interaction by interaction. You may reach your stress limit after one trip to the market. Tomorrow, though, you may be able to go to a movie theatre. Try to be flexible and only retreat when you feel you need to. Don’t hesitate to retreat a bit if you become overwhelmed, but also don’t hesitate to jump out there again.

Emotional Biases in SSRI Withdrawal

If you flip a coin 4 times, and the first three come up heads, there is a built in human bias to assume that the next flip will be tails. Even though the coin has no memory of previous throws, the human mind still assigns a bias to the series as a whole. Similarly, withdrawal symptoms create their own momentum. The timeline of withdrawal is much longer than a short series of coin flips, but the principle can still apply.

For many people, withdrawal occurs in windows and waves. It oscillates between times when symptoms are lighter and times when they are more severe. Since the mind always seeks to find or create patterns in what it experiences, it’s natural to try to anticipate the next cycle, and predict what it will be like. This can be good and bad. In the middle of a wave, it gives the mind something to look forward to. Instead of being mired in a wave, the mind can anticipate the symptoms improving. Likewise, a window can be seen as an opportunity to consolidate gains and take stock of overall progress towards recovery.

The relief that you get from lighter symptoms can be squandered by anticipating the next wave, though. In many ways, it’s a one sided bias. There is fear of slipping into a wave during windows, but no anticipation of a new window during a wave. There is an emotional weight associated with each stage.  It’s like our perception of a coin flip instead of the actual binary nature of the flip. While you’re in a wave, that negative feeling gains a sense of permanence that it shouldn’t. Even though waves inevitably give way to windows, except in the case of a chronic conditions (withdrawal is usually episodic, not chronic), there’s no anticipation, just suffering in the moment. That fear persists into the next window, coloring our interpretation of the window. Instead of recognizing it as an improvement, it’s seen as a brief respite or interlude before the next wave.

One of the big mental tasks in making progress during withdrawal is to separate waves and windows. Instead of viewing them as two sides of the same coin, inevitable partners, they should be viewed in the larger context of recovery. The window/wave pattern is a sign that the brain is recovering. Once the symptoms begin to break up, the waves should get shorter/milder and the windows should get longer/better. Waves and windows should also be viewed in isolation from each other, like a coin flip. Feeling better is not the cause of the next wave, just as feeling bad is not the cause of the next window. Those cycles are signs of deeper restructuring taking place in the brain. There are things that you can do to mitigate waves and extend windows. Mindfulness can help.  Being aware of the cycle between waves and windows can mitigate the bad, and extend the good.  It’s important not to obsess about your emotional state, but be cognizant of the ebb and flow of emotions.  At the same time, waves and windows need to be dealt with individually.  You can’t always be looking forward to the next change. At first glance, a window seems like an easy thing to deal with.  You’re feeling better! Normal!  What’s to do?  Actually, windows are opportunities to take stock.

Windows

Windows represent your progress towards normalcy during withdrawal.  It’s very hard to compare your mid window state with “normal”, though.  We all live in a relative mental state.  It’s very hard to step outside yourself and compare the way you are now with the way you’ll be after recovery.  It is possible to perceive changes from one window to another, though.  Keeping a journal can help quantify your well being during a window.  It’s human nature to avoid dwelling on negative emotions when we’re feeling good, so it takes a bit of discipline to go back to your journal during a window.  Many people post on withdrawal sites until they start to feel better, then only come back when they experience a wave.  Just like a course of antibiotics, it’s important to keep the mindfulness momentum going during a window, even if you feel better.

Waves

Dealing with waves is a defensive thing.  Being mindful that the symptoms of a wave are not a normal part of your mental makeup is a good strategy.  In normal thought, we only consciously perceive a small portion of what happens in the depths of our minds.  Our cultural and mental makeup parses most thoughts, and they don’t become conscious thoughts.  Anger, fear, anxiety, even psychosis, are all parts of everyday thought.  We only see the small part that our conscious mind actively thinks about, though.  Psychotic, angry, and fearful thoughts are normally not part of our daily interactions, so we don’t give them much “processor time” in our active minds.  We present the side of our minds that we want to the outside world.  In a wave, the normal checks and balances are suppressed.  Instead of automatically suppressing thoughts we don’t want, the mind presents everything all at once.  It’s important to actively take over the parsing role until that automatic system has a chance to re establish itself.

So, in a strange way, waves and windows should be seen in the larger context of overall recovery and also viewed as binary things (heads or tails).  It’s not easy to take the long view of withdrawal while still dealing with each individually.  One of the symptoms of withdrawal that makes it particularly hard is the suppression of cognition.  We simply don’t think as quickly or deeply as we normally would.  It creates a vulnerability to the symptoms that makes the waves more powerful and the windows less satisfying.  Even if you fail to have much of an effect on the cycles in the beginning, that effort will pay dividends over time.  It’s hard to keep trying through multiple “failures”, but you’re building a mental reserve that will eventually have an effect on the whole process of recovery.

Waves and Windows in SSRI Withdrawal

 

Tapering off of an SSRI can be very difficult.  It’s not like other ailments that have defined timelines and symptoms.  When a doctor treats a broken bone, there are long established milestones in recovery.  SSRI withdrawal is different.  Each case seems to be unique, with different length and severity of symptoms.  One of the frustrating parts of withdrawal is the way that symptoms fluctuate over time.  People call them waves and windows.  At first, withdrawal is unremitting.  There seems to be no respite from the symptoms.  After some time, which varies from person to person, symptoms begin to break up into cycles.  There are times when symptoms aren’t as bad, and other times when they are quite severe.  It’s not a universal pattern.  Some patients find that they have constant symptoms that slowly go away.  The wave/window pattern seems to be the majority, though.

Waves

Waves describe those times when symptoms are more severe.  Symptoms can be physical or emotional.  It feels like getting sick.  When you start to get a cold, you can feel little changes that presage the illness.  A sore throat or headache, then the full symptoms of the cold start in a day or two.  A wave has similar precursors.  Usually, physical symptoms are the first sign that a wave is coming.  A stiff neck, headaches, and dizziness are some of the symptoms.  A day or two later, the emotional symptoms become more pronounced.  These symptoms include obsessive or compulsive thoughts, depression, or anxiety.  It can be helpful to break waves up into different parts.  Knowing that each part of a wave is coming, and what to expect next, can make the whole process easier to handle.  The reason we’re so adept at knowing the cycle of a cold is that we’ve had them off and on all our lives.  we’re aware of the subtle changes in our bodies that tell us that we’re getting sick.  In the same way, it takes some experience before you can separate the parts of wave from each other.  It takes still more time to develop ways of dealing with each part of a wave.

Physical symptoms of a wave are hard to mitigate.  There isn’t much you can do about general joint pain, headaches, or dizziness.  You can try analgesics like aspirin or ibuprofen, but those aches are fairly resistant to those kinds of pain killers.  Dizziness is likewise difficult to deal with.  Withdrawal dizziness isn’t just something that happens when you stand up or spin around.  It’s hard to believe that you can feel dizzy when you lie down, but it happens in withdrawal.  Try to stay as still as possible until it gets better.  Try to use the physical symptoms as a sign that there are new symptoms coming that you need to deal with.

There isn’t really any way to avoid the emotional symptoms of a wave.  There is no way to “suck it up and get over it”.  Our minds create our reality in a fluid way.  The anxiety, depression, and obsessions of a wave are just as real as the screen in front of you.  The fact that our rational mind would recognize that it’s not real or overblown doesn’t mean much when you’re experiencing it.  That’s the essence of a wave.  It’s not rational or thoughtful.  Obsessive thoughts can be about almost anything from the benign to the surreal.  Self harm can suddenly seem like a rational idea.  In normal thought, the entire spectrum of emotions are right below the surface.  When you’re cut off in traffic, you have several choices.  You can ignore it, respond verbally or visually, speed up, slow down.  Even the psychotic is present in that moment.  We’ve become so accustomed to suppressing psychotic thoughts that we don’t even realize that the idea of ramming the other car didn’t rise up to our conscious minds.  In withdrawal, those thoughts that would normally be dismissed without a thought gain the same weight in our conscious minds as socially acceptable thoughts.  The only way to mitigate the emotional symptoms of a wave is to be mindful of the difference between normal thought and the unnatural power that irrational thought has in a wave.  It’s very hard to pick apart which thoughts are your normal responses and which ones are caused by the wave.  They mingle together in a chaotic way.  That’s what makes your reactions to a window just as important as your reactions to a wave.

Windows

Windows are periods of time when symptoms are not as pronounced as they were before.  At first, it feels like it’s over… you beat withdrawal, you’re free.  That’s the cruel joke of SSRI withdrawal.  Windows and waves are intertwined together.  The way withdrawal works for most people is that the windows slowly, ever so slowly, get longer, and the waves get shorter.  A window is more than a vacation from symptoms, though.  It is a huge relief to have some time off from feeling miserable.  Savor the good times in withdrawal, because that is what you have to look forward to in recovery.  More than relief, though, windows are an opportunity to prepare yourself to deal with waves in a better way.  Try to pay attention to how you feel.  Examine the way you think, the way you respond to things.  Try to recognize the way that you automatically choose responses and thoughts.  Emotionally, a window is a return to the normal way of parsing thoughts.  Instead of allowing all thoughts to rise to consciousness, you mind is automatically tuning out undesirable thoughts based on your personality.  Paying attention to the process during a window makes it easier to impose that same kind of structure during the next wave.  It’s that mindfulness that you’ll need during the next wave.  After a while, you can tell when a thought is out of character, and consciously dismiss it.

Withdrawal is a process of alternating good times and bad.  The more you’re able to mitigate the bad with mindfulness, the shorter the waves become.  Our minds often work in feedback loops.  One thought leads to another through association, creating the pattern of our minds.  Mindfulness allows us to shape the pattern to a certain extent.  The more you can recognize that a harmful thought is just part of a wave, and not a normal part of your normal mind, the faster you’ll get to the next window.  Eventually, that last window becomes reality, and the next wave never comes.  The mindfulness you’ve developed getting there will remain, though.

 

Meta symptoms of SSRI withdrawal

SSRI withdrawal causes many symptoms, both physical and emotional.  In some cases, the emotional symptoms can combine to create larger symptoms, meta symptoms.   Renewed or new depression is one of the most common symptoms of withdrawal.  Depression is an inward emotion.  It forces the patient to examine themselves in an overly critical manner.  In that compulsive self examination, other symptoms can emerge.  It’s not the healthy self examination of mindfulness or self awareness, it is an uncontrollable focus on the negative.  The patient doesn’t see themselves in a mindful light, but through the dark lens imposed by the depression.  Even joyful memories are seen in that distorted way.

Regret and Guilt

The depression of withdrawal forces the mind to pick negative aspects out of any event and focus itself on that exclusively.  That single minded focus creates regret in the patient.  Many times, it is out of proportion to the event itself.  Regret and guilt are very similar to each other.  They feed on each other.  Withdrawal pushes the mind to see guilt in places that the patient normally wouldn’t.  Withdrawal depression narrows the focus of the mind to see only the negative in an event.

I only remember a few things from my 10th birthday.  My parents had organized a party for me and invited several friends to come over.  I had wanted toe clips for my bicycle for a long time, and was very happy that I got them for my birthday.  Being 10, I wanted to install them on my bike right away.  During withdrawal, the nature of that memory changed.  Instead of remembering the happiness of the event, I focused on the fact that my parents scolded me for installing toe clips instead of playing with my friends.

Compulsive memories

One of the symptoms of SSRI withdrawal is renewed memories.  While taking the drug, memories are largely suppressed.  Many patients report that they do not have a good sense of what happened to them while they were on the drug.  They know the larger arc of events, but many of the details are missing.  The emotional nature of memories is likewise suppressed.  During withdrawal, the emotional tie to memories is reawakened.  It doesn’t happen in a linear way, though.  Instead of recalling memories in an associative way, where one memory reminds you of another, memories flood into the conscious mind without context.  It can be profound or trivial, the only commonality is that the memory is not recalled, it is imposed on the mind.  It is a sign that the mind is reordering itself, cataloging memories and emotions into a new order.

For more than a month I couldn’t get the image of a fast food restaurant out of my mind.  I ate lunch there 2-3 times a week for a year, 4 years ago.  The restaurant didn’t have any particularly strong memories associated with it for me.  Every time I tried to go to sleep, though, the image of that Wendy’s just wouldn’t leave my mind.  There was no guilt or other emotion associated with the image, I just couldn’t see anything else when I closed my eyes.

Fear of relapse

At first, withdrawal is unrelenting and overwhelming.  The symptoms occur continuously.  As time goes by, symptoms begin to break up.  Withdrawal becomes a cyclical thing.  There are times when symptoms are severe, and times when they are light.  People call them Windows and Waves.  A window is a period where symptoms are lighter, waves are times when symptoms are more pronounced.  There is an inevitable fear that arises from feeling better.  It’s not intuitive to an outside observer, but it is a real phenomenon for the person going through it.  Withdrawal creates a mental relativism where the way you feel at the moment feels like a permanent state.  Combined with uncontrollable negative self examination, waves begin to feel “realer” than windows.  That breeds a distrust of windows.  There is always the fear that a window is just a prelude to another wave.  Windows and Waves are closely connected, they are part of the cycle of recovery in SSRI withdrawal.  There is some validity to that fear of relapse in the beginning.  Windows will revert to waves, just as waves will break up into new windows.  As time goes by, the windows become longer and the waves become shorter.  There is no point in time that the patient can point to when the severity of waves falls below the level of awareness.  It’s one of the subtleties of withdrawal that progress can only be measured once it has occurred.  You just realize one day that you haven’t experienced a wave in a long time.  The last window has just extended longer than the others, with no wave afterwards.  The fear of relapsing into a wave lingers, though.  It becomes one of the central thoughts during recovery.  Slipping into a wave feels like getting sick, just mental instead of physical.  It begins with a subtle feeling of instability.  It then progresses into more profound feelings of despair.  Waves are very difficult to deal with.  The entire context of the mind has been altered.  There is little memory of feeling better, just the emotions associated with the wave.  So, when the wave breaks up into a window, there is a legitimate fear of the next, seemingly inevitable, wave.  The inevitable thing about withdrawal is that recovery will happen, though.  Many people have experienced prolonged feelings of despair, even suicidal ideation, and recovered themselves in the end.

The best way to deal with the window/wave cycle is to recognize that it is occurring.  It’s difficult to think of waves as temporary phases in recovery.  Somehow, it’s easier to believe that the windows are the temporary phases.  Being mindful of the cycle between windows and waves helps.  Just as windows are temporary in the beginning of withdrawal, waves likewise become temporary as recovery progresses.  Think of the last time you started a new job.  At first, all the new information felt overwhelming.  It’s easy to think that you will never absorb it all.  You quickly become accustomed to the new routine, though.  Eventually, the daily tasks lose their overwhelming quality and become easier to accomplish.  Withdrawal is similar in some ways.  At first, it’s very hard to believe that it will ever end.  Eventually, you begin to reclaim yourself, and it gets easier the longer you do it.

How long do SSRI withdrawal symptoms last?

 

This is one of the most common, and hardest to answer, questions about SSRI withdrawal.  Withdrawal from psychiatric medications is still officially a mystery.  According to the manufacturers, SSRI do not cause severe withdrawal.  Instead, symptoms from “discontinuation syndrome” are mild to moderate and last one to three weeks.  This is in direct contrast to some patients that experience prolonged, severe, symptoms.  The disparity between experience and official information causes a lot of confusion for patients.  When we break a bone or pull a muscle, there are long established timelines for recovery.  Individual recoveries can vary in time and intensity.  Overall, most patients follow the timeline and recover close to the time expected.

The lack of information about SSRI may be part of the reason why it is so hard to predict how long withdrawal symptoms will last.  Most studies of SSRI are limited to 8-12 weeks and do not address cessation of the drug.  Manufacturers study their drugs in this manner to gain regulatory approval for sale, not so much to study the effects of the drugs.  Studies of the effects and withdrawal would be more of an academic pursuit and wouldn’t contribute to the commercial application of the medications.  Fewer people would begin prescriptions for SSRI if they knew that there was a chance that they would become dependent on the drug and have to go through an extended withdrawal period when they decide to stop taking it.

From the symptom perspective, it’s very hard to say which patients will experience withdrawal.  Some patients do follow the accepted tapering schedule and are able to stop taking the medication with minimal symptoms, despite taking the drug for a long time.  Other patients experience extended symptoms after taking the drug for a short period.  The underlying predictors of which patients are sensitive to SSRI and which ones aren’t are not well understood.  Without enough knowledge to predict which patients will experience withdrawal, it is even harder to predict how long those symptoms will last.  It becomes a very personal, individual, struggle for each patient.  That being said, there are some ways to gauge progress and predict how long an individual will experience withdrawal.

When a patient first experiences withdrawal symptoms, they can be quite frightening.  Since the mind creates reality in real time, withdrawal can seem like it will become permanent and debilitating.  That is the reality that withdrawal creates, though, not reality as an impartial observer would see it.  We live in a relative state of mind, though, so that’s all we see.  If we could step back from withdrawal symptoms, we would realize that this is a temporary crisis and not a permanent state of mind.  Withdrawal forces the mind to act more on instinct than it normally would.  In normal thought, the intellect regulates instinctual responses, moderating them to match social situations and our own moral beliefs.  Withdrawal disconnects the intellect from its normal regulatory function.  Instead of moderating behavior, anger, fear, and anxiety are allowed to come to the conscious mind.  As an example, take a trip to a supermarket and pay attention to your reactions.  When another shopper blocks an aisle or cuts you off at an intersection, anger is a possible reaction.  Normally, that anger is easily suppressed and you let the incident go without any reaction.  Withdrawal removes that moderating behavior and allows anger to become the acceptable response.  For a person not experiencing withdrawal, it takes a great deal of introspection to even detect the anger that arises from the incident.  It’s almost automatic to suppress the anger because reacting to such a trivial interaction is socially inappropriate.

Reasserting the intellect during withdrawal is the best way to control symptoms and mitigate the power they have.  Being mindful of how you would normally react to a situation and forcing yourself to follow that course of action can help.  It’s easier said than done.  Because of the mental relativism that withdrawal causes, it can be very hard to separate yourself from the immediate symptoms you’re experiencing.  Mindfulness is the process of stepping back from a situation and evaluating the emotions that you are feeling, and then changing your behavior based on what you think rather than your immediate emotions.  Essentially, it’s replacing the automatic moderating behavior that’s suppressed in withdrawal with conscious effort.  It can slow down the flow a conversation quite a bit second guessing every thought, but it’s better than acting out in a way that you might regret later.  It’s not necessary to think your way through every interaction forever, just until the automatic moderating function reestablishes itself.

Taking a longer view of withdrawal can help as well.  It’s very hard to envision how you will feel in two months when you’re living with symptoms minute by minute.  SSRI withdrawal happens in waves and windows.  Those are the names that veterans give to the cycle of withdrawal symptoms.  Waves are periods of time when symptoms are more severe.  Windows are periods when symptoms are not as bad.  As withdrawal progresses, waves come and go.  In the long term, the waves become shorter and milder, while the windows become better and longer.  Eventually, you enter a “window” that doesn’t end.  Mindfulness allows you to see that waves are not permanent and not put too much hope in the permanency of windows.  It sounds fatalistic to acknowledge that windows do not represent a cure, but it’s more realistic.  It’s a delicate balance between hope and pragmatism.  Being aware of how you are feeling during a window is just as important as being aware of your feelings during a wave.  Just as you need to consciously moderate your feelings in a wave, you have to bank the good parts of a window to use when you enter the next wave.  It’s an intrinsic exercise that you can’t really start to practice until you have the experience of a couple cycles behind you.  In the beginning, it’s very hard to see the larger picture because all there is is the immediate symptoms.  Some faith that symptoms will get better is required.  Faith is one of the first things to be shaken in withdrawal.  Family and friends don’t understand, doctors don’t believe it’s withdrawal.  You can’t “suck it up”, either, it doesn’t work like that.  All that can shake anyone’s certainty.  The wave/window pattern is part of withdrawal, though.  Just as you will enter waves during withdrawal, they will also end at some point.

As time goes by and you become accustomed to the cycle of waves and windows, the question becomes less about how long will withdrawal last.  Mindfulness becomes a habit, something that is almost second nature.  It’s something that you can apply to your life after withdrawal.  Most people started taking an SSRI to treat an existing condition.  The decision to stop taking an SSRI usually comes after the drug has lost efficacy or the side effects outweigh the benefits.  That requires some way of dealing with the symptoms of the condition after withdrawal is over.  It’s hard to see the mindfulness that withdrawal forces on you as a benefit of that trauma, but it does give you a good way to handle an existing condition.  In the long term, the goal becomes less about getting off the drug as fast as possible, and more about getting off the drug with as much quality of life as possible.  In a way, a good way, the coping tools you develop during withdrawal will serve you for the rest of your life.  The adage that alcoholics use to describe recovery is apt for people suffering from SSRI withdrawal. “One day at a time” is the best way to approach recovery.

Separating SSRI withdrawal symptoms

SSRI withdrawal symptoms are very complicated because they are primarily emotional in nature.  This makes diagnosing the difference between existing symptoms and those caused by SSRI withdrawal very difficult.  In withdrawal, it is the scale of emotions that define the problem.  Anxiety, depression, fear, even psychosis, are part of the normal human emotional spectrum.  In normal thought, all of these emotions come and go, but are regulated.  An irrational thought may float to the surface, but it is quickly dismissed as inappropriate.  During withdrawal, the normal regulation of thought is short circuited.  The control that we’re so used to exercising over our internal mental landscape disappears.  Rational and irrational thoughts hold the same weight in the conscious mind.  A healthy person who experiences an emotionally traumatic event still feels the full range of emotions, but is able to parse through them all and choose the appropriate response.  If he is cut off in traffic, all of the possible responses are available.  Ramming the car, cutting them off in return, speeding up, slowing down, tailgating, and ignoring the incident all surface in the mind of the driver.  Usually, a person will choose the most socially acceptable response.  It is the function of our higher brains to control our responses.  Withdrawal turns that process on its head.  Instead of evaluating the available responses and choosing the one that best fits into our internal social beliefs, the emotion with the most power overcomes the others.  A normally passive person may lash out in anger or fear during SSRI withdrawal.

One of the key tasks during SSRI withdrawal is to separate the emotions that are caused by withdrawal from those that rise normally.  Beyond the emotions themselves, it’s important to separate the scale of emotions as well.  Anxiety is a normal emotion, it is a programmed response to danger.  The difference during withdrawal is that the scale of anxiety is not regulated as it normally would be.  One of the complicating factors during withdrawal is that emotions have been suppressed during the period of SSRI use.  In a way, the drug takes over the emotional regulation task from the patient.  The patient is, in effect, relearning how to regulate emotions without the effect of the drug.  It’s almost as if the mind is cataloging what is required to regulate each emotion, one madness at a time.

There are several strategies that can be used to parse through the scale of emotions during withdrawal.  The least effective is to try to remember how you reacted to similar situations before starting the SSRI.  Memory is a tricky thing.  Trying to remember the scale of an emotion years later is even trickier.  Events and emotions tend to drift in our memories as we recall them.  Each time we recall an event, the memory is affected by our experiences.  We are essentially interpreting the memory based on what we’ve experienced since.  Memories are not stored in blocks like a computer hard drive.  Instead, different elements of the event are stored in different parts of our brains.  These separate elements are then gathered together to compile a composite memory of the event.  For example, the memory of a high school dance is separated into many different elements.  The smell of a corsage may be influenced by a trip to a garden that you took many years later.  When the memory of the smell is combined with the memory of the dance, you may unwittingly change the memory by combining elements of the garden into it.  Not specifics, your mind would immediately recognize garden elements intruding into the dance memory.  Instead, emotional elements of the garden trip may influence the way you recall the dance.  That is the pitfall in trying to remember your pre SSRI emotional responses.  Your memories may be influenced by experiences you have had since.  Also, since you were not specifically trying to capture your emotional responses at the time, they become more susceptible to memory drift.

Trying to gauge how other people respond to an emotional event is likewise very difficult.  Observing a person’s response does not give a good indication of their internal mental state.  It’s very hard to associate their external response to your internal state.  First, you are relying on your interpretation of their response.  Then, you have to compare how you feel to that interpretation.  Just like personal memories can be influenced, interpersonal emotional interpretations are susceptible to our own experiences.

The best method to parse out withdrawal symptoms from normal emotions is to practice mindfulness and self awareness.  Keeping a journal can help.  It’s really the ongoing experience of withdrawal that teaches the most about the differences.  Withdrawal symptoms come and go during the process.  As they wax and wane, your personal norm becomes more apparent.  Everyone has a different “normal”.  Pay attention to how you are feeling when your symptoms are slight, and apply that knowledge to the times when symptoms reassert themselves.  Most people who start taking an SSRI did so because of an existing condition, be it anxiety, depression, etc.  Separating that baseline from withdrawal is the goal of practicing mindfulness during withdrawal.  Pay attention to the rise and fall of emotions.  Don’t berate yourself if you overreact to a situation.  That’s very common in withdrawal.  Instead, use that experience to recognize what caused the overreaction.  That recognition and awareness will help you reassert the control that seems so fleeting during withdrawal.  As control returns, the worst symptoms of withdrawal should become more manageable.

In the long term, the mindfulness required to track withdrawal symptoms becomes helpful because you will eventually have to address the original symptoms that first prompted you to start taking an SSRI.  Being aware of emotional triggers and your response to them will provide more emotional stability as time goes by.  Not only can emotional self awareness provide relief from withdrawal symptoms, but it may also provide a method for managing underlying anxiety problems.

Dealing with anger during SSRI withdrawal

Anger is a normal human emotion.  It’s a force of change for most people.  We see something we don’t like in the world around us and feel compelled to change or avoid it. In our nuanced minds, we’ve developed sophisticated ways of expressing and dealing with anger.  We use discussion and logic to make anger serve us in productive ways.  SSRI withdrawal turns this normal process on its head. In withdrawal, anger forms independently in the mind.  Instead of rising in response to an external event, withdrawal causes anger without context.  You’re just angry.  There’s no event or emotion preceding it, it just pops into your head.

Normally, there is a range of emotion to anger.  We’ve separated physical and intellectual anger, and each has a range of responses. We moderate ourselves to match the event.  Instead of fighting an insulting person, we debate or avoid them.  Extreme responses are withheld until there is a threat of physical harm.  Withdrawal blurs the line between intellectual and physical anger and eliminates the scale that we usually apply to situations to gauge our responses.  Since withdrawal anger rises independently, there is no external scale to give us queues to measure our response.  The mind is filled with anger that we then try to apply to the situation.  That’s the key difference between normal anger and the rage that accompanies SSRI withdrawal.  Instead of reacting to an external event, we’re applying an internal state to the external world.

Because the internal mental state doesn’t match the external anger queue, people in withdrawal can often dramatically over react to small annoyances.  The anger that the patient is experiencing is at the upper scale of the emotion.  It’s happening without an external event to trigger it, so the mind searches for the cause of the anger, and attaches it to anything it sees in the outside world.  The patient may feel enough anger to start a physical altercation, and apply that rage to a trivial interaction.  Road rage is one of the most common responses to withdrawal anger.  Combining rage with the anonymity of the road removes the last few barriers in the mind between anger and action.

Anger is one of the most difficult emotions to deal with in SSRI withdrawal.  It’s the one emotion that the patient is most likely to translate into action against friends or strangers.  Anxiety, depression and fear are also amplified in withdrawal, but those emotions tend to draw the patient into themselves.  Anger is more likely to be expressed outwards towards other people.  For patients, it’s important to be mindful of the difference between normal anger and that caused by withdrawal.  If you’re angry and can’t see what triggered it, it’s most likely caused by withdrawal.  It’s a delicate point in withdrawal.  Be very careful not to do or say something that you will regret later.  This stage of withdrawal causes more broken friendships and burned bridges than any other.  It’s very hard to control anger in withdrawal, though.  Don’t berate yourself too much if you do something out of character, a lot of people experience the exact same thing.

For friends and loved ones, it’s important to suspend reactions to a person experiencing anger in SSRI withdrawal.  No matter how hurtful or mean they seem, the emotion is not normal anger.  It’s an out of control emotion that they are expressing incoherently.  They can still use their imagination and intellect to lash out, but the basis for the anger is beyond their control.  Attacks can seem very personal and elaborate.  They may bring up very old problems that seemed resolved long ago.  They’re not really trying to relive those old arguments, they are just clinging to anything that can explain the sudden and overwhelming anger they feel.  We’re not used to experiencing anger without context, so someone in withdrawal will grab onto anything to explain it.  As much as you can, be relentlessly positive.  S/he needs your support to get through this crisis.  Responding with anger will escalate the situation.  The patient has no real upper limit on their anger, but you do.  Try to moderate yourself and control your emotions.  It’s very hard to deal with a person suffering from withdrawal rage, but escalating the situation will not serve either of you in the long run.

The anger phase of withdrawal does pass.  The goal for the patient and those around him/her is to recognize that it wasn’t a normal part of their personality.  As strange as it seems, withdrawal can temporarily change your personality and make you do things that you would normally never do.  It’s not an emotional state that you’re likely to return to, either.  Once you pass through anger, there are other phases of withdrawal to deal with, but anger should slowly become more manageable as time goes by.  You may find that you are better equipped to deal with normal anger now that you’ve experienced irrational anger.  Instead of fearing that you may relapse into anger in the future, take heart that you have passed through the most difficult part of SSRI withdrawal.

Reinstating SSRI use during withdrawal

 

You decide that you want to wean off an SSRI. The reason can vary.  Perhaps you want to see what you’re like without the drug.  Perhaps you think you’ve outgrown whatever problem prompted you to take an SSRI in the first place.  Perhaps the drug no longer works like it did before.  At first, your doctor is taken aback and tries to convince you to continue taking the drug.  Eventually, he or she tells you that it’s relatively simple to get off an SSRI.  A doctor’s schedule usually includes skipping days and reducing the dosage by 25% every 10 days until you’re down to 0.  For many people, that schedule will work, but a significant percentage can’t tolerate a fast weaning schedule.  These people quickly start to feel withdrawal symptoms that can vary from mild to severe.  Persisting in a doctor’s weaning schedule can eventually turn mild symptoms into severe symptoms.  The brain reacts to lower dosages of SSRI at its own schedule, not ours.  There is a lag between a lowered dosage and the onset of symptoms that can catch up with you after several drops.  The result is that you feel the effects of several dosage drops all at once.  In worst cases, patients can experience rage, anxiety, fear, even psychotic symptoms.  The best way to wean off an SSRI is to do it very slowly.  Most people who taper off an SSRI do it very quickly at first.  It’s not until symptoms appear that they question the schedule.

Once withdrawal symptoms have appeared, the nature of SSRI use has changed.  There is a point where you put yourself on a track to wean off the drug and can’t really get back to the previous state of SSRI use.  You can take your original dose, but the effect will be different.  Instead of creating the mental environment that you experienced before, it’s now a mix of withdrawal and the SSRI numbness.  Once you’ve experienced a mental state without an SSRI, it’s very hard to go back.  Just as you’re very aware of the effects of withdrawal, restarting an SSRI makes you very aware of the effects of the drug.  Reinstating an SSRI is a mixed bag.  Deciding to start back on an SSRI should be done carefully.  Be prepared to experience some form of withdrawal symptoms as well as the general slowing of mental functions that accompanies SSRI use.  Reinstating should be done to prevent the worst withdrawal symptoms and provide some relief from symptoms that threaten your well being.  It is an opportunity to slowly wean off the drug after weaning too quickly on your first try.

Reinstating an SSRI should not be viewed as a permanent thing.  It’s another step in weaning off of the drug.  It’s very difficult to try taking another drug to treat withdrawal symptoms.  Often, you will get the start up effects of the new drug, as well as the withdrawal symptoms of the last drug.  It’s best to restart the same SSRI you were taking before.  As an example, say you were taking 40mg/day of Paxil for 5 years.  You begin tapering as recommended and reach 0mg/day after 2 months.  At about the 3 or 4 month point, you feel that your well being is in jeopardy.  Normally, the brain would adjust to reductions in Paxil at about 10% each 4-6 weeks.  After 4 months, your brain would be expecting about 20mg/day.  You can reinstate at 20 mg/day, which should mitigate the worst withdrawal symptoms.  After a month, the worst withdrawal symptoms should dissipate and you can continue weaning off the drug at a slower rate.  The next step should be about 18mg/day.  After another month to six weeks, you can move to 16.2mg/day.  Weaning 10% each month or so will eventually bring you down to 0mg/day with fewer withdrawal symptoms.  The slower schedule does not eliminate withdrawal, but it should allow you to live a mostly normal life while doing it.  It’s very difficult to measure pills to that precision, but small changes in dosage can have large effects on withdrawal symptoms.

In order to decide what dosage to reinstate at, take your previous maximum dosage and reduce that number by 10% for each month since you started weaning.  Since your goal is to wean off of an SSRI, you don’t want to start at too high a dose, but at the same time, you don’t want to start at too low a dose.  A low dose reinstatement will take longer to reach stability, which will extend the whole process of tapering.  It’s very tempting to restart at a low dose.  One of the common feelings for people who are weaning off an SSRI is that they just want to be done with it as quickly as possible.  It’s disconcerting to realize that you’ve been “hooked” on this drug for a long time when you thought it was just a therapeutic drug.  SSRI weaning is a long process, often feeling interminable.  It’s important to stick to a slow schedule, though.  Quality of life is more important than the larger goal of being SSRI free, which will happen eventually.