- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
I was on Paxil a few years ago (prescribed by my GP for anxiety!) However, it didn't help, so we decided to taper my dose. My GP thought I could drop down to nothing in a week. Yeah right!
With a few days, I had all sorts of problems - including having thoughts that it'd be interesting to drive my call into a wall. I've never had thoughts like that before or since. Happily, I was able to resist the intrusive thoughts and went back up to my prior dose.
Overall, it took 6 months to very very gradually taper down to nothing. That was one of the worst periods of my life.
Since then, the FDA has imposed a "black box" warning on Paxil (their toughest level of warning) on Paxil about increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior.
Largely as a result of a lawsuit, GlaxoSmithCline warned to not discontinue Paxil suddenly, but to taper. In general, the longer you've been taking it and the more you've been taking, the harder it is to safely get off Paxil. (My problem was surprising as my dose wasn't that high & I'd been taking it for months, not years.)
GlaxoSmithCline argues that it's "discontinuation syndrome" rather than "withdrawal" because you don't need more and more to get the same effect. However, the attempted distinction is just annoying to someone going through that hell.
