Hi, I'm Plila

I am a 65 year old woman who has been on and off SSRI and other psychiatric drugs since I was 30 . I suspect my system has been severely “kindled” from so many stops and starts and being switched from one med to another rapidly. I restarted Zoloft last October because I had severe anxiety to the point of not being able to function, and being terrified at the state of the world and reading the news all day from under the covers. After 3 months on 50mg zoloft, I was able to stop looking at the news and felt much better. But I also felt semi hypomanic, and at the same time physically exhausted., so I decided to try 25mg. That switch caused muscle pain and worse exhaustion at first, but then less hypomania.. yet still feeling too tired .. and digestive issues I don’t want to talk about in an intro 🙄. I have actually been “talking” to ai to try to get a good plan to taper off, asking it to refer only to taper communities or verified experts, but it can’t resist projecting its own (stupid) theories “oh im so sorry, I hallucinated that!!” So I decided to try this. But I do have to give it credit for being the one to tell me not to just drop from 25mg to 0 under any circumstances and tell me about the hyperbolic tapering. It was so consistent in that one respect I read more about it and read and listened to Mark Horowitz talk about his experience trying to quit lexapro, and realized that’s what had always happened to me that family and doctors had concluded i just need to be on psychiatric meds . I’ve tapered from 25mg beginning August 11 to 18mg starting Sept 27 (or so) where I am now holding because I have very uncomfortable muscle pain, as if I’ve been beaten all over vs over exercised. The AI told me this can develop at 3 weeks post dose reduction, and persist and that I should hold here until it goes away, but I am not sure that it knows what it’s talking about because it also told me that the transporter occupancy has barely moved since I dropped from 25 mg (still 68%) and agreed it doenst make sense. So I’m here to see if real people have any more experience or are just as confused as I am! I that case it might just be nice to commiserate! Anyway.. sorry for the rambling, and Hello!