Paxil withdrawal

[Danubean]

Has anyone tried getting off Paxil slowly?  I have gone from 20 mg to 15 to 10 and have now started 5 mg.  This has taken me a year.  I am now noticing that my anxiety is returning now that I am down to 5 mg.  Has anyone gotten through this?

[skydnsr]

I agree with everything ed34 said.  I have been through withdrawal from another antidepressant (not Paxil, but in the same class of drugs) and so has my mother.  Yes, it can take years, in some cases -- especially if you were on the Paxil for years before starting the taper.  One rule of thumb is that the withdrawal will take approximately one month for every year that you were on an antidepressant.  But everyone is an individual.  The process takes as long as it takes for you, and however long it takes is okay.  

You could consider just staying at the 5mg. dose for a while and waiting to see if your anxiety will subside to tolerable levels after a long enough time.  It just might do that.  You can even go back to 10mg for a while and sort of take a rest break on that, and then try 5mg again later on.  I don't know if 7.5mg is an option, because it depends on what size tablets are available, and I'm not familar with how Paxil comes.  I do know that, of the antidepressants, Paxil is especially notorious for causing very unpleasant "discontinuation" symptoms.  

One thing that might help a lot is cognitive therapy for anxiety.  You don't really know how much of your current anxiety is a return of your original condition vs. withdrawal symptoms, but either way, cognitive therapy can help.  If you can get some non-drug coping skills that help you with the anxiety, then it will be easier to live without the Paxil.  That is the purpose of the cognitive therapy.

Both my mother and I went cold turkey off of antidepressants and were literally disabled by the shock to our respective systems, me for five years and my mother for about six months.  I don't recommend that, to say the least.  Tapering slowly is the way to go.  I've read a couple of books about the subject of getting off of antidepressants, and the books say that that last little bit of dose is oftentimes harder to get off of than the first few big chunks.  You would think that once you were down to only a fraction of your original dose, it would be easy to let go of that and get off of the drug entirely, but it doesn't necessarily work that way.  

Take it easy on yourself, and good luck.

[ed34]

Not been on antidepressant medication myself, but this would be expected. They are highly addictive and it will be like kicking smoking. So I guess the anxiety could be a mixture of your original anxiety issues, plus withdrawal. I know it sounds odd saying withdrawal after a year, but you are still taking the medication. A friend of mine was on antidepressants and it took him years to get off them fully.