Dialing back Zoloft

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid was on a high dose of Zoloft for a little over a year (175mg) and it took us 9 months to taper it down. When we got down to 100mg I noticed more smiles and energy. The taper went smoothly until we got to 50mg then kid had lots of withdrawal symptoms, vision issues, brain zaps, etc. so we stayed at 50 for a month, then went down in increments of 5mg over months. The final 15 mg we went to liquid and went down very slowly. Kid has been off of it now for 6 months and is doing great. Good luck, and be patient with this. If your kid has been stable for a while, he deserves to have a trial without meds. You can always go back on a lower dose. My kid has lost weight and gotten more active off the meds. And has had and continues to have lots of therapy to address anxiety, etc.

Thank you so much for this! Harvard published a guide for tapering each medication based on starting dose but it seemed a bit quick. They had each dose cut by mg. Your experience above seems like a better model for our situation, especially considering the length of time he's been at a high dose.
I'm so happy to hear about the positive outcome for your child! We will look out for the side effects, too.

FYI - I did a very gradual taper and still had some side effects. Because of the way SSRIs work, the biggest symptoms are when you taper down to zero, even if you taper slowly. If I were you I’d plan the end of the taper to coincide with summer if he goes all the way off so he doesn’t have to be in school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How will he learn to cope without meds? What is tut plan for weaning him off?

Some people require lifelong medication and don’t need to learn to “cope” just like a diabetic doesn’t need to cope without insulin.

Op here. We initially thought that would be our case. But we discovered DS has had very low iron which can cause anxiety.

I'm gobsmacked that no where along our way through the mental health system (big national children's hospitals to small private testing and therapists to our pediatrician) did anyone ever order an iron or ferritin test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid was on a high dose of Zoloft for a little over a year (175mg) and it took us 9 months to taper it down. When we got down to 100mg I noticed more smiles and energy. The taper went smoothly until we got to 50mg then kid had lots of withdrawal symptoms, vision issues, brain zaps, etc. so we stayed at 50 for a month, then went down in increments of 5mg over months. The final 15 mg we went to liquid and went down very slowly. Kid has been off of it now for 6 months and is doing great. Good luck, and be patient with this. If your kid has been stable for a while, he deserves to have a trial without meds. You can always go back on a lower dose. My kid has lost weight and gotten more active off the meds. And has had and continues to have lots of therapy to address anxiety, etc.

Thank you so much for this! Harvard published a guide for tapering each medication based on starting dose but it seemed a bit quick. They had each dose cut by mg. Your experience above seems like a better model for our situation, especially considering the length of time he's been at a high dose.
I'm so happy to hear about the positive outcome for your child! We will look out for the side effects, too.

FYI - I did a very gradual taper and still had some side effects. Because of the way SSRIs work, the biggest symptoms are when you taper down to zero, even if you taper slowly. If I were you I’d plan the end of the taper to coincide with summer if he goes all the way off so he doesn’t have to be in school.

Thanks!! I actually would have thought the first reductions would be the toughest so I'm very grateful you posted this!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid was on a high dose of Zoloft for a little over a year (175mg) and it took us 9 months to taper it down. When we got down to 100mg I noticed more smiles and energy. The taper went smoothly until we got to 50mg then kid had lots of withdrawal symptoms, vision issues, brain zaps, etc. so we stayed at 50 for a month, then went down in increments of 5mg over months. The final 15 mg we went to liquid and went down very slowly. Kid has been off of it now for 6 months and is doing great. Good luck, and be patient with this. If your kid has been stable for a while, he deserves to have a trial without meds. You can always go back on a lower dose. My kid has lost weight and gotten more active off the meds. And has had and continues to have lots of therapy to address anxiety, etc.

Thank you so much for this! Harvard published a guide for tapering each medication based on starting dose but it seemed a bit quick. They had each dose cut by mg. Your experience above seems like a better model for our situation, especially considering the length of time he's been at a high dose.
I'm so happy to hear about the positive outcome for your child! We will look out for the side effects, too.

FYI - I did a very gradual taper and still had some side effects. Because of the way SSRIs work, the biggest symptoms are when you taper down to zero, even if you taper slowly. If I were you I’d plan the end of the taper to coincide with summer if he goes all the way off so he doesn’t have to be in school.

I am PP who wrote about my kid's gradual taper, and we found this to be true - we timed final weeks over Christmas break - which could work for you if you are starting taper now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid was on a high dose of Zoloft for a little over a year (175mg) and it took us 9 months to taper it down. When we got down to 100mg I noticed more smiles and energy. The taper went smoothly until we got to 50mg then kid had lots of withdrawal symptoms, vision issues, brain zaps, etc. so we stayed at 50 for a month, then went down in increments of 5mg over months. The final 15 mg we went to liquid and went down very slowly. Kid has been off of it now for 6 months and is doing great. Good luck, and be patient with this. If your kid has been stable for a while, he deserves to have a trial without meds. You can always go back on a lower dose. My kid has lost weight and gotten more active off the meds. And has had and continues to have lots of therapy to address anxiety, etc.

Thank you so much for this! Harvard published a guide for tapering each medication based on starting dose but it seemed a bit quick. They had each dose cut by mg. Your experience above seems like a better model for our situation, especially considering the length of time he's been at a high dose.
I'm so happy to hear about the positive outcome for your child! We will look out for the side effects, too.

FYI - I did a very gradual taper and still had some side effects. Because of the way SSRIs work, the biggest symptoms are when you taper down to zero, even if you taper slowly. If I were you I’d plan the end of the taper to coincide with summer if he goes all the way off so he doesn’t have to be in school.

I am PP who wrote about my kid's gradual taper, and we found this to be true - we timed final weeks over Christmas break - which could work for you if you are starting taper now.

This sounds like a good time line. Summer is going to be a big transition time with extra curricula activities so we don't want to have any negative effects this summer, but winter break would be better.
So far, we're doing well at the 10 day mark - went from 200 to 150.
I'm not sure if we should go to 125 or 100, but we will probably give it another week or so before we cut it again

[Anonymous]

I suggest doing some solid CBT with a therapist for coping mechanisms if you haven't already. Being able to deal with the thoughts and sensations will make a med free trial more manageable.

If meds are indeed needed, you may need to try another one. I remember having "Paxil coma" which sounds similar to your situation. Changed meds and got my mojo back, minus the anxiety.

[Anonymous]

If you taper him all the way down, give it 3 weeks after the last dose to get over the side effects and see what his new baseline is. Here are the symptoms I experienced when I tapered off Lexapro:
- irritability! like the worst PMS!
- tearfulness/labile mood. Also like PMS
- much greater access to emotions and abilitu to express them (but also sometimes resulting in crying!)
- over sensitive to sound
- dizziness/vertigo (can be quite bad)
- general flu-like feeling

But I was really happy to be off Lexapro when that was over, so it’s worth it.

[Anonymous]

My 16 year old just tapered off 100mg this winter/spring. He went down by 25mg every two weeks without any side effects. He started to swim 4-5 times a week from the fall amd made his school swim team so I think the exercise helped as well. He has days when I think maybe he shouldn’t have come off it but overall it has been worth it. He has lost about a pound a week so that’s a plus too because he gained weight when he started and went from being average weight to overweight.

[Anonymous]

Be careful with the unsupervised tapering. You should really try to find a psychopharmacologist, who can taper very slowly with medical supervision. There's a reason that SSRIs have a black box for teens--going up or down on them can increase their suicide risk.