A Life Without Celexa?

As long as I can remember I have been on antidepressants.  It’s been so long I don’t even remember the order of them but in the past I’ve been on Prozac, Zoloft, Welbutrin and am currently on Celexa.  I’ve been on Celexa since before I met Rob so at least fourteen years.  At some point, I just accepted the fact that I will be on them for the rest of my life.

I ran out of my Celexa on Tuesday night, meaning I took my last pill around five on Tuesday.  My intention was to stop at the Pharmacy and pick up my refill on the way home from visiting friends Wednesday night therefore I would only miss a couple hours in between doses.  Well, I had car trouble that stopped the visit and the stop at the pharmacy.  It wasn’t really the thing on my mind after the check engine light went on in my car and it was having trouble shifting(whole other entry right there).

So this morning I got to work and thought of taking my pill, remembering I was out.  I evaluated how I felt during the morning and didn’t feel too bad.  Nothing out of the ordinary so I got to thinking.  What if I just stopped taking it, see what happened?  The worst that could happen is I get out of control with my anger and emotions and then go back on it.  I’m not exactly a fan of taking a chemical every day to make myself feel better and half the time it didn’t work anyway!

Recently I had started taking a vitamin regimen and was feeling pretty good because of it.  It’s a long story but I think I had a vitamin B deficiency and am working on getting that back up to speed.  Vitamin B deficiency can cause all the symptoms that I started taking anti depressants for in the first place.   So I though with my new vitamin program making me feel better, maybe it’s time to ditch the prescription.

So on my morning break I researched going cold turkey off celexa and the results were less than favorable–especially if you take the maximum dosage, which I have forever.  The preferred method is to taper off the dosage slowly until you are at the smallest dosage and then quit it.   There will still be withdrawals but they won’t be nearly as severe.

Well, the fact that there are severe withdrawals to not taking this drug was reason enough for me to want to stop taking it.  It never occurred to me that this could happen because I take my pill every day and have only missed about a day maximum in between doses.

So tonight I picked up my scrip and took my 40 mg dose.  Starting tomorrow I’m going to take 30 mg for a while and eventually cut down to 10 and then off.  It’s time to see how my mind and body will react to the real world without chemical protection.  I may not like it and my husband may eventually beg me to get back on it for his sake, but I’ve got to try.

I’ll keep you posted.

If you care to read, this is the blog entry I found that convinced me I wanted to wean off the drug.

And this was the article that told me not to do it cold turkey