i have took celexa for 1 year now have stopped the withdraws last how long?
404844
Good for you, you must be feeling much better, :-).\n\nI hope you're going off it with your Dr.'s help though and haven't just decided on your own to stop taking it.  If you quit 'cold turkey' it can take several week's to start to feel better, but if your Dr. take's you off it, they will 'wean' you so that the withdrawal isn't so bad.\n\nThe Dr. will gradually lower your dose so that you don't feel much discomfort coming off of Celexa and that's the safest, easiest way for your body to adjust.  \nAll the best to you!
503683
Hi! Well first of all, you should talk to a doctor who can determine which drug is best for you. \n\nThat being said, I have OCD and I'am taking Paxil, which is also a SSRI (like Luvox). It has worked really well for me. However, different drugs work for different people. I am really careful about the medicines I take, and I visit my doctor regularly to check my meds and dosage. I do have strong withdrawl symptoms if I run out of my meds after 3 or 4 days.\n\nPersonally, hemeopathy didn't work for me. I ended up very frustrated about taking them for so long and not feeling better.\n\nIf you do have OCD, I hope you find treatment that's right for you and helps you feel better. It's hard but hang in there. Write again if you have any other questions.\n\nIf you don't have ODC, I hope this info helps.
791592
Please don't stop your medication. You are feeling better because of the medication. It is easy to believe that you don't need it anymore, but that isn't true. I once stopped my methotrexate injections and could barely walk after 2 weeks. I realized that I felt better because of my medication. Stopping the medication ended up hurting me. Take your medication so that you and those around you do not have to suffer. I have faith that you will and am glad you found a medication that has truly helped you.
310289
I don't know about Celexa specifically, but many drugs do become less effective over time as you build up tolerance to them.  However, if the drug has been working consistently for seven years it is unlikely that it would spontaneously stop.  More likely, something else has changed that is making you feel somewhat depressed.  Maybe you're stressed out about something, or there's some other reason you might be feeling kind of bad.  However, you should talk to your doctor rather than posting here on Answers cause even if we sound like we know what we're talking about most of us actually don't.
903288
it all depends on how long you have been taking Benzo, and whether or not you are addicted. If you were taking benzo for a long time, and you have only recently stopped taking them, you will need at least 30 days.
324994
You should never abruptly stop an SSRI medication.  (selective Seritonin Reuptake Inhibitor)  However, you should not experience headaches after a 2 day miss.  \n\nHope this helps.
947742
NONE it is dangerous to stop meds cold turkey, taper off!
728714
i took lexapro for a while too. the best thing honestly is talk to your doctor, but if you don't want to do that (i didn't either), i can tell you how i did it.\n\ni started off taking one every other day for a week, then the next week one every two days. then every one every three days, etc. i kept doing this pattern every week until the medicine was gone. the key is to wean yourself off of it, you don't want to stop abruptly. it took several weeks for the levels of the medicine to build in your system, and it will have the same effect coming out of your system, takes a while. so if you slowly reduce the dose over time, your body will  be able to adjust accordingly.\n\ngood luck to you! and again if you feel comfortable speak to your doctor about it.
407872
I've taken Celexa, too, and it took at least couple of weeks for it to have any effect on the way I was feeling...  so I would GUESS it's the anxiety and not the medication since you've only been taking it for three days.  But if I were you'd I'd take a look at the drug info that came with it and see if that's a side effect you need to worry about.  Call the doctor and ask--better safe than sorry.
78136
Talk to your doctor. If you want to come off it, then ask him to help you. It is important to follow a gradual withdrawal program as stopping suddenly can cause an array of troublesome symptoms, the most common being dizziness, which can last for days on end. Flu-like feelings, including nausea, headache and fatigue, are also common, as are intense feelings of anxiety, irritability or sadness.\n\nIt is important to recognise that when you withdraw from a drug, many of these symptoms can also appear. Some people experience alarming sensations of tingling or burning in various parts of the body; ringing in the ears; blurred vision; or flashing lights before the eyes. Some people even describe a feeling of shock waves pulsing through their arms and legs, as if they had been zapped with a jolt of electricity, a condition sometimes called lightning-bolt syndrome. This is what is known as "discontinuation syndrome" and should NOT be misread as some form of "relapse". Make sure that your doctor is fully aware of Discontinuation Syndrome. There is plenty of information on the web.\n\nAs for needing more...personally, I don't believe ANYONE needs to take antidepressants. These drugs are inherently harmful (in a variety of different ways) and do not cure ANYTHING. It is no different to smoking weed to feel more relaxed, or snorting coke to get high. Psych drugs disrupt the normal chemical operation of the brain creating a false sense of mood. It cures nothing. And the longer you take it, the more likely you are to suffer from many of the drug's seriously ill effects.\n\nSeek non-drug solutions. Check out http://www.alternativementalhealth.com or perhaps http://groups.msn.com/psychbusters/alternativehealth.msnw for more info.\n\nMike\n\n--\nDecoding Psychiatric Propaganda\nhttp://groups.msn.com/psychbusters
867759
How to Stop Taking Paxil, Paxil CR: Your doctor should be recommending that you reduce your of the CR dosage by 12.5mg every four days. You should probably make it five days because Paxil's discontinuation syndrome is so harsh. That means putting up with the suck-ass side effects for longer, but trust me, it really sucks less this way.  Based on the 15-20 hour half-life.  If your doctor says something that's slower than that, go for it!  I'm all for slower discontinuations.  Four to five days is the fastest you can step down the dosage.\n\n\nHow To Safely Stop Taking Psychiatric & Anti-Epileptic Medications\n\nLots of people hit this site wanting to know how to stop taking their crazy meds.  That's understandable.  There are many good reasons to stop taking the meds.  There are also many bad reasons to stop taking them.  I'll try to help you sort out the good from the bad reasons.  But if you do have good reasons, you have to stop taking the meds safely.  Sudden or rapid discontinuation can lead to many problems.  This guide is just to use to make sure that you and your doctor have worked out a good discontinuation schedule for a medication, presuming you have the luxury for such. \n\nYou must work with your doctor! You are not qualified to make this decision on your own.  Got that?  What you and your doctor need to do is work out a discontinuation schedule for any medication.  This is the reverse of the titration schedule (if any, which I'm actually against), which was the plan of how your dosage was increased.  The discontinuation schedule is the plan of how you'll decrease the amount of a med you'll take.  Ask your doctor what it is based on.  There are three things a discontinuation schedule should be based on:      \nthe half-life of a drug \n\nlooking for the return of any symptoms \n\nexperience with taking someone off a med \n\nThe last one is either other people going off the same med or you coming off of the same or other meds.  Or both. \n \n\nIf you're lucky enough to get an explanation from your doctor, the half-life of a psychiatric medication is often explained like this, "It's out of your body in that many hours, but it's still in your brain." That's a gross oversimplification, but it's close enough for government work. Here's a way to picture the half-life in action. Take a glass and fill it half full with some beverage. Now fill it the rest of the way with water. OK, now empty it half of the mixture out and top it off with water. Keep doing that until you have something you'd drink and that could pass as water. The number of times it took to do that is the half-life, expressed in a quantity of water, of a particular beverage. Try it with a different beverage and you'd get a different half-life. Half-life means how long it takes for half of the metabolites to get flushed out of your system. The half-lives of meds is expressed in time because the process of adding water to the glass is more-or-less constant in your body. And in the environment for the half-lives of radioactive materials. So using Effexor (venlafaxine), if you're down to your last 37.5mg dose after 20 hours you'll have 18.75mg left in your body. Twenty hours after that you'll have about 9.4mg left. And so forth until it's gone, about 80-100 hours after your final 37.5mg tablet. Please, don't get all Xeno's Paradoxical on me, after four or five passes, as it were, a med is so broken down that the effects shouldn't be noticeable. The only real variable is not if it's four or five times the length of the half-life, but if you metabolize the med quickly or slowly. These half-life numbers are the based on the arithmetic mean averages from clinical trials and studies. Read the pharmacokinetics section of the med's PI sheet carefully to see what the known range of a drug's half-life is.\n\nAll right so where does this "In your brain bu
372998
I was on Zyprexa also and they gave it to me along with the CELEXA.  The Zyprexa was to help me sleep because I just can't sleep more than a couple hours at a time.  HOWEVER! ZYPREXA has MANY MANY class action law-suits against it and this drug about to be pulled from circulation.  It causes way too many side effects.  I wouldn't take it anymore if I were you, but that's up to you.  Don't do anything without asking your doctor.  I received all kinds of papers in the mail about this nationwide lawsuit and even calls at home advising me to no longer take it.  It basically the first few times I used it, did it's job and knocked me out cold, I was on next to the smallest dose.  Then it got to where it didn't faze me.  I did however find it made me more angry.  Just my own experience with it.  Good Luck.
985846
Don't panic. I know major withdrawal like you're experiencing sucks, but you're not hooked forever. If you ever need to/want to go off the meds, a doctor will be able to take you off them gradually, so as to avoid the intense side effects.  \n\nIt's like being in a wheelchair or on crutches to help you get around.  People can't dump their ambulatory help and start doing the tango. It takes time and sometimes physical therapy, but that doesn't mean they'll be stuck in a wheelchair forever. The same goes for psychiatric meds. You need professional guidance and time to stand on your own without meds like that.\n\nJust think of the withdrawal symptoms as powerful reminders to take the meds regularly. ;)
697204
You don't need to pay me, hon.  The drug is celexa, an antidepressant, called a seratonin re-uptake inhibitor, and feeling absolutely, positively exhaused is one of those nasty little side effects.  You didin't say how long you had been taking it, but here is a little run-down\n\nThe symptoms can back off a little if you reduce your dose, and then slowly over the next month again up it to what your physician wants you to be on.  Interestingly, many physicians what to know how you are doing, so you should probably check with him/her.  My shuband had patients check in regularly, and changed the med, mixed it with others, whatever it took to get the desired results with the least amount of side effects..... It takes several weeks to several months to get the full effect.  In the second little paragraph, you pretty much bomb your efforts to get better:  it is important that you loose weight.... big time important, so it is important that you exercise -- even a 10 minute walk every day to begin with, then 20.  Exercise is a seratonin releaser, a sort of automatic, natural anti-depressant.  You MUST get up and move around, absolutely. and that means at first a minimum of 10 minute walk.  Now, you don't have to go and become a gym rat... but yes, you must do something other than stare at the tv.....  No, you don't have cancer, at least not from this drug, but your depression will not get better, nor will your lack of energy unless you do do some exercising.\n\nHelpful?
893138
I am in celexa and I take it for depression it has worked for me. I take a low dosage form 40mg.  It usually takes about 3/4 months for it to work, but also going to the therapist helps too.  It takes the edge off. \n\nThe only reason I agreed to celexa is that it had little side effects and you can be taken off of it.  Its not like zoloft or the heavier mao's that have more sever withdrawl symptons.\n\nAll i know is the i'm much happier and I can function alot better because of it.  I actually feel like my old self again.. I'm happier, its easier to deal with things,  I got rid of all the toxic family members(aka i don't speak to them don't need'm) and deal with dad's death, a friend dying of cancer, and my sister being raped, and my husband having a heart attack. \n\nI also meditate that helps very much too.
380642
Antidepressants take 6-8 weeks to kick in.  Its an agonizing wait, I know.  You need to be careful when discontinuing your medication on your own.  You run the risk of getting discontinuation syndrome, in which your depression is greater than your depression 4 weeks ago.  Never discontinue a medication without first speaking to your doctor.
937947
Honestly I was on Cymbalta about three months ago and the withdrawals are a piece of cake... there are much worse medications out there.  But, I was in the process of switching to another medication to replace the Cymbalta.  It's a good medication I think but if you're losing weight that quickly, that is not a good sign.  You should probably call your psychiatrist about that.  I never had side effects from it, so if you are...probably not the right medication for you, but I'm definitely no doctor.  I've just been on tons of different types of anti-depressants  :)  Hope that helped!