Increasing dosage?

[Vari]

Hey guys,

basically I was on 100mg of Zoloft for a couple of months, but now my Doctor has increased the dosage to 150mg. I've been on 150mg for about a week now, and I've noticed an increase in my anxiety. I know that everybody is different, but has anybody else experienced an increase in their anxiety when upping the dose of their medication? If so, how long did this take before things subsided? Also, is this increase fairly usual?

Thanks.

[tailspin]

Hi Vari, I was on Zoloft for several years at a dose of 100 mg daily and I tolerated it well. However, after a while, it didn't seem to be helping so much anymore so my psychiatrist suggested I increase to 150 mg daily. On the day I increased my dose I had a bad panic attack. I hadn't had one in a while and it really freaked me out. I honestly don't think the panic attack was caused by increasing my dose to 150 mg. I think that was a coincidence. However, the trouble is, I associated the dose increase with the panic attack and so it became really difficult for me not to freak out about upping my dose.

This was all rather strange because I did not have any problems with increased anxiety when I started Zoloft, or when I increased my dose to 100 mg a day (from 50 mg daily, which is what I started on). But, as I say, the Zoloft seemed to stop helping me after a few years so my anxiety was already pretty high again before the psychiatrist suggested I increase my dose. I think it was just a combination of unlucky circumstances which made it impossible for me to increase. I stayed on 100 mg for a while and then tapered down and switched to a new anti-depressant to see if that would help more.

At any rate, I don't think my experience is necessarily typical at all. And I think that increasing to a dose of 150 mg Zoloft per day under a psychiatrist's supervision is normal (I believe the maximum dose is 200 mg). It is quite common to experience some increase in anxiety - and other side effects - when you increase your dose. Typically this should subside in a week or so.

I know that Zoloft is available in a 25 mg pill, so maybe you could ask your doctor for some of those and increase more gradually? Really hope it works out for you! Good luck!