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Anxiety Community
This patient support community is for discussions relating to generalized anxiety, anxiety and eating, anxiety and sleeping, mood swings, and phobias.
Tapering off of Lexapro
by heidimp, Apr 02, 2007 12:00AM
I went on Lexapro for anxiety back 2 months ago to get through a very rough time in my life. I was starting student teaching, preparing my professional portfolio for graduation, preparing for graduation itself, my car had been broken down for a few months so was having to walk a mile at 5am to get to the bus stop and take an hour bus ride to student teach for 8 hours, then take the bus to work and work 4 or 5 hours everyday and then working weekends all without a day off.
Now that things are going well; I have been seeing a counselor to talk about my anxiety and now that I have a handle on the problem, I have been permission to start going off of the Lexapro. I am seeing my counselor every two weeks now instead of the twice a week I needed back in early February.
My doctor told me to take half for a few weeks and then every other day. Upon doing some research about the withdraw symptoms I have decided to go off very slowly. So I went from 10 mg to 5mg for 3 weeks and now am taking 2.5mg for 2 weeks and then 2.5mg every other day for about a week or two.
Is this safe? Or reasonable?
I am very nervous about the withdraw symptoms since my impending graduation depends on me being a good teacher for these next few weeks and getting a good enough grade to graduate.
Now that things are going well; I have been seeing a counselor to talk about my anxiety and now that I have a handle on the problem, I have been permission to start going off of the Lexapro. I am seeing my counselor every two weeks now instead of the twice a week I needed back in early February.
My doctor told me to take half for a few weeks and then every other day. Upon doing some research about the withdraw symptoms I have decided to go off very slowly. So I went from 10 mg to 5mg for 3 weeks and now am taking 2.5mg for 2 weeks and then 2.5mg every other day for about a week or two.
Is this safe? Or reasonable?
I am very nervous about the withdraw symptoms since my impending graduation depends on me being a good teacher for these next few weeks and getting a good enough grade to graduate.
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Anyway, that being said, I have a friend who was on 40mg (YES, 40mg--when she changed docs the new one almost keeled over that someone had put her on that dosage!!). She tapered down 10mg every month and never had a problem after the last month at 10mg. I guess, as with side effects, everyone can react differently.
Good luck!!