Alan S
04-26-2014, 12:51 PM
Hi everyone.
I only joined the forum last December as I was going through withdrawal symptoms from stopping taking Citalopram for anxiety. I had been taking Citalopram for around a year and a half, I was feeling good so I decided to start coming off it in August/September 2013, tapering the dose from 20 to 10mg for a while, then to 10mg every second day. I came off them completely in December and after a week or two off the tablets I started to feel like hell. I posted on this forum to see if anyone else had experiences with the withdrawl symptoms I was having and when I found people did, I drew comfort off it.
Starting around February I started to feel like my old self again, life was good for the most part and my anxiety seemed to have been after disappearing. Unfortunately by mid march this started to unravel, For the past 5 weeks I am having fierce problems sleeping, I cannot seem to sleep when I want to, when I do fall asleep (usually late at night) I have trouble waking up the next morning and constantly have the feeling that I'm not after sleeping for long or sleeping properly. I'm having problems with my vision (unable to focus, vision feels different, sensitive to light ) , problems with my memory and have trouble concentrating or focusing a lot of the time (I'm coming up to exam time in college which means this is a major problem at the moment), I have various other symptoms such as mild nausea from time to time, occasional headaches. Another major symptom that is affecting me the last few weeks is a serious lack of motivation, I seem to really have to make an effort to get myself to do things.
I'm actually only assuming that these symptoms are my anxiety coming back, I used get panic attacks before I went on the meds but I haven't got one since I started taking the meds, I also used have chest pains, leg cramps and other things that I don't have this time.
What I'm really looking here for is advice. My sleeping problems are the main thing that are affecting me at the moment, 3 - 4am seems to be the earliest I can fall asleep no matter what which makes getting up early a real problem. I'm not really sure what to do? I could go back to my doctor and he'd put me back on medication no problem but that's not really a solution either is it? Thats just masking the problem temporarily? I was considering going to see a psychiatrist but I'm also unsure about this, I'd consider myself to have a good deal of self awareness, Over the last year or two I've thought a lot and can't find anything in particular that would cause me extreme anxiety, if that's the case ( and my doctor told me I had floating anxiety or GAD ) then there's not much a psychologist could do as there is no underlying reason for my anxiety?
Does anyone have any opinions on what I should do?
I only joined the forum last December as I was going through withdrawal symptoms from stopping taking Citalopram for anxiety. I had been taking Citalopram for around a year and a half, I was feeling good so I decided to start coming off it in August/September 2013, tapering the dose from 20 to 10mg for a while, then to 10mg every second day. I came off them completely in December and after a week or two off the tablets I started to feel like hell. I posted on this forum to see if anyone else had experiences with the withdrawl symptoms I was having and when I found people did, I drew comfort off it.
Starting around February I started to feel like my old self again, life was good for the most part and my anxiety seemed to have been after disappearing. Unfortunately by mid march this started to unravel, For the past 5 weeks I am having fierce problems sleeping, I cannot seem to sleep when I want to, when I do fall asleep (usually late at night) I have trouble waking up the next morning and constantly have the feeling that I'm not after sleeping for long or sleeping properly. I'm having problems with my vision (unable to focus, vision feels different, sensitive to light ) , problems with my memory and have trouble concentrating or focusing a lot of the time (I'm coming up to exam time in college which means this is a major problem at the moment), I have various other symptoms such as mild nausea from time to time, occasional headaches. Another major symptom that is affecting me the last few weeks is a serious lack of motivation, I seem to really have to make an effort to get myself to do things.
I'm actually only assuming that these symptoms are my anxiety coming back, I used get panic attacks before I went on the meds but I haven't got one since I started taking the meds, I also used have chest pains, leg cramps and other things that I don't have this time.
What I'm really looking here for is advice. My sleeping problems are the main thing that are affecting me at the moment, 3 - 4am seems to be the earliest I can fall asleep no matter what which makes getting up early a real problem. I'm not really sure what to do? I could go back to my doctor and he'd put me back on medication no problem but that's not really a solution either is it? Thats just masking the problem temporarily? I was considering going to see a psychiatrist but I'm also unsure about this, I'd consider myself to have a good deal of self awareness, Over the last year or two I've thought a lot and can't find anything in particular that would cause me extreme anxiety, if that's the case ( and my doctor told me I had floating anxiety or GAD ) then there's not much a psychologist could do as there is no underlying reason for my anxiety?
Does anyone have any opinions on what I should do?