Hi, I'm Simona

Welcome, Simona. The general advice on these forums is to only taper one drug at a time and to taper between 3-10%, depending on your sensitivity to the drug and withdrawals, every 4 weeks. You are right to be concerned about the advice you're being given - your doctor is making too many changes too rapidly. In your shoes, I would invest time in self-educating and try to find a provider who is more knowledgeable about the serious harm lots of changes and fast tapers can cause to the central nervous system. There's lots of good info in the ‘Guides’ tab, the individual threads on the Tapering forum and educational stuff in the resources section, too. There are also some good threads about how to manage symptoms in the ‘Symptoms & Support’ forum. It can be worth reading up on the Surviving Antidepressants site as well (it’s no longer active, but still readable), as there’s a wealth of experience and knowledge there, as it was active for a long time. The most important thing is not to rush into anything and to read up and settle in before starting to taper or going any further in your taper. Safety, and not speed, is the winning ticket.

Hi @Simona, welcome to Taper Community!

"For 5 years, I was on Zoloft and Bromazepam (benzo). I've stopped in November 2025. This April, severe physical and psychological anxiety returned" — @Simona

Did you stop both of these drugs suddenly at the same time? If so, that fully explains the anxiety you experienced months later. It was a withdrawal symptom. When tapering psychiatric drugs, the safest way off is to slowly reduce one drug at a time using Hyperbolic tapering. It's not your fault that you didn't know about this. Most people - including doctors - don't. What happened to you happens to so many people going through this. Drugs are rapidly tapered (or cold-turkeyed) and then when withdrawal symptoms appear - since doctors don't understand anything about withdrawal - they start adding more and more drugs to try and "fix" things. This oftentimes adds to the iatrogenic injury that has occurred. I'm not saying this to scare you, but I want you to have knowledge about what's going on. Please don't think that your situation is hopeless! Since you've had so many drug changes, it might be best to not make any more changes until things stabilize. Once you're stable, then slowly tapering one drug at a time is the safest way out. We recommend Hyperbolic tapering here at Taper Community - monthly reductions of no more than 10% of the previous month's dose. The reductions will therefore get smaller and smaller as time goes on. The greatest changes in receptor occupancy happen at very low doses, so tapering this way is safer and easier on the brain. If you go to the Tapering Protocols, Symptoms & Self-Care, and I Need Support sections of the forum and click on the Guides tab, you'll find lots of helpful advice and tips. I'm sorry you're in this position. Keep in mind that most doctors are clueless when it comes to safe deprescribing or recognizing and handling withdrawal-related issues. I'm glad you're here so you can get the proper knowledge and support! Catina 💜

Hi @Simona, I wanted to give you some tapering information for Lorazepam.... https://taper.community/drugs/ativan https://taper.community/resources/blog/ativan-withdrawal-symptoms-and-timeline Here is a PDF of the Ashton Manual for benzo tapering: https://www.benzoinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Ashton-Manual.pdf