Can Missing a dose of Zoloft cause this much trouble?

[RT93]

So I'm heading into 4 months of being on Zoloft.
Took me this whole time to finally get used to it after struggling on it. Finally, the past two weeks I started feeling good!, not worrying about any health problems, depression, anxiety, and stress.

Then, This past Saturday I was in a rush to work after waking up late and forgot to take my meds, zoloft & protonix. I thought to myself I'm feeling good so one day without it won't hurt. Come to wake up Sunday he'll breaks loose. From then to now, I feel like I'm taking the pill for the first time again.

I feel funny & weird, like I'm not all there, spaced out, been having bad stomach issues, hard to eat, gas and trapped gas, belching.

Can missing one dose from taking this med 4 months straight really screw you up this bad?
What should I do, or will it take a long time to
re adjust?

[Paxiled]

People are different, but yes, a skipped dose does bring withdrawal symptoms for many people.  Other than Prozac, ssris don't stay in the body very long, which is one of the reasons many believe Prozac has fewer withdrawal problems.  That would explain the spaciness.  After years of being on clonazepam, if I miss my dose by even an hour of when I regularly take it I can start feeling really weird.  While that's a benzo and not an antidepressant, if you're going to take these pills that have withdrawal problems just try hard to stick to your schedule.  But the stomach problems aren't the ones you'd expect from Zoloft- that would be more likely to be diarrhea or something like that.  What you've got is probably caused by taking the protonix on a regular basis.  These meds suppress stomach acid, but the stomach must produce that acid in order to digest minerals and protein.  So when you take those kinds of drugs on a regular basis, the stomach has to produce more and more acid to compensate.  That's why digestive problems are usually best treated by someone other than a doctor, who only knows how to suppress things, not fix them.  Digestive problems are usually from dietary problems or insufficient chewing or eating too soon before going to bed or a lack of exercise that helps keep things moving.  There are a lot of natural medicines that help with this until you find a solution that don't interfere with the regular functioning of the stomach.  Of course, the same applies to your Zoloft -- keep looking for a cure through therapy or something else, because the drug just alters your body so you don't feel so bad, it doesn't fix the underlying problem.  Often nothing else works, which was the case with me, but don't stop trying.  You never know.  With my digestive problems, and they are rampant with people on antidepressants and anxiety sufferers, drugs just made the problem stick around and need to be treated.  The best treatment I got was a doctor who told me to start TM, and that got rid of my biggest problem, which was developing an ulcer in my twenties.  Now I treat these things with aloe vera juice and DGL and peppermint oil caps, when needed, because that doesn't permanently push my stomach into imbalance.  

[AnxiousNoMore]

But the post said they felt off 4 days after resuming, so wouldn't taking the meds at the proper doses for the next 3 days "rebalance" RT by then?

[Paxiled]

Not sure I understand.  RT is the only RT in the world, and how RT responds is how RT responds.  Might not be the way you or I would respond, but it is the way he responded.  If we knew the answer to what I think your question is, we'd know better how to treat this stuff more effectively.  What I'm not sure about is what you mean by "rebalance."  Taking a drug puts us out of balance on purpose, not taking it forces the body to try and return to normalcy.  This is often very hard for bodies to do.

[AnxiousNoMore]

What I meant was RT was fine until RT missed one dose, so after resuming the dose 4 straight days after wouldn't RT be back to where he was before?
" Finally, the past two weeks I started feeling good!, not worrying about any health problems, depression, anxiety, and stress."

[Paxiled]

As I said, RT is the only RT out there.  Some of us have such a strong reaction to stopping a med that it takes some time for things to go back to where they were.  Sometimes they never do, especially if you've been on a drug a long time and it's a drug known for being very difficult to stop taking.  Sometimes it's just the trauma of what happened -- people with mental disorders don't react well to stress.  It is what it is, and when bad things happen, we have to find a way to stop it if we can but often can't figure out the why of it other than the human body is hard to get back into balance once it gets out of balance.

[Paxiled]

As for the stomach problems, though, acid suppressants cause something called rebound acidity.  In other words, it makes it worse over time, as the body has to do something, in this case try to produce acid while a drug is forcing it not to because it has to in order to have proper digestion.  These types of drugs were intended for very short-term relief, but docs give them to us and we stay on them.  When we stop, we feel what the stomach has been trying to do, which is produce more and more acid in order to digest the protein and minerals that keep us alive and the drug has been trying to suppress, a vicious circle that, as with most medicine, affects some a lot more than others.

[AnxiousNoMore]

One day missing Zoloft shouldn't make that much difference. Plus if you kept at your normal dose afterwards you should be back to normal before now anyway.

The protonix is another story though,since stomach issues are unpredictable. Your stomach could have been on the edge of giving you trouble and missing the med could set it off,or it just might have decided to act up on its own anyway. Best of luck dealing with it - been there wondering if the pain would ever be manageable for about 5 years, then it disappeared for some reason.

[AnxiousNoMore]

I imagine that within the next day, paxiled will post better info for you on the effects of a skipped dose, because he knows more about this kind of thing.